Taxation and exemption policy

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Taxing a church is by definition double-taxation, correct?

Churches in the U.S. are completely funded by donation. If I go to work, earn some money, get half of it taxed, then give some of the half I was allowed to keep to a church, and the church gets taxed on that, how is that NOT double taxation?

If we're going to tax churches, I say we should do away with the concept of tax-exempt organizations all-together. Why should St. Francis's pay taxes on the donations it receives but a marxist one not?

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A church is basically a business. Certain businesses conducting certain kinds of work (say, non profit, humanitarian causes, social care and services, charities, etc.) qualify for tax-exempt status.

What there is going on, increasingly, are big mega churches, or businesses posing as para-religious organizations, such as "Family Research Institutes" and other think tanks or research focus groups or lobbying organizations, which use being related to churches or being an outgrowth of churches, to basically meddle in government and act as lobbyists and not pay tax.

Personally, I don't think thinly veiled hate groups (almost anything with "Family" in the title with religious political agendas) should be operating within our political system and lobbying for legislation while enjoying tax-exempt status.

I have no problem with your local congregation church not paying tax. I do have a problem if all of you put your money into the church as political donations to ban lipstick or sex in movies and get a special tax status.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

A church is basically a business. Certain businesses conducting certain kinds of work (say, non profit, humanitarian causes, social care and services, charities, etc.) qualify for tax-exempt status.

What there is going on, increasingly, are big mega churches, or businesses posing as para-religious organizations, such as "Family Research Institutes" and other think tanks or research focus groups or lobbying organizations, which use being related to churches or being an outgrowth of churches, to basically meddle in government and act as lobbyists and not pay tax.

Personally, I don't think thinly veiled hate groups (almost anything with "Family" in the title with religious political agendas) should be operating within our political system and lobbying for legislation while enjoying tax-exempt status.

I have no problem with your local congregation church not paying tax. I do have a problem if all of you put your money into the church as political donations to ban lipstick or sex in movies and get a special tax status.

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Now here we more agree than disagree. You're talking about the ability of a religious body to act as a lobbying agent, and I agree with you, if that's what they're up to, tax them as such. But wouldn't other 'lobbying' organizations, like the Sierra Club qualify? Other than you support one and refute the other, personally, can you tell me why one should be tax exempt and the other should be taxable?

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Now here we more agree than disagree. You're talking about the ability of a religious body to act as a lobbying agent, and I agree with you, if that's what they're up to, tax them as such. But wouldn't other 'lobbying' organizations, like the Sierra Club qualify? Other than you support one and refute the other, personally, can you tell me why one should be tax exempt and the other should be taxable?

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I disagree with disallowing any and all church tax exempt status. Only the ones meddling in government and not providing any sort of religious function whatsoever except trying to get "moral laws" passed. The Amish, or even Jehova's Witnesses, for instance-- churches pay no taxes, but neither do they put money towards legislation or trying to get religious laws passed. Fine by me.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I disagree with disallowing any and all church tax exempt status. Only the ones meddling in government and not providing any sort of religious function whatsoever except trying to get "moral laws" passed. The Amish, or even Jehova's Witnesses, for instance-- churches pay no taxes, but neither do they put money towards legislation or trying to get religious laws passed. Fine by me.

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If they want to spend money on that fine, called lobbying. Other religions like global warmingism and multiculturalism do the same and aren't excused but actually funded. Church isn't free from taxing that is a myth, they mostly get by with donations that have already been taxed, and it goes into seperate whatsitcalled that have to play by the same rules as any other business. They are only excused from paying over property rights when it comes to the land the church is placed on, that is hardly fair indeed, nobody should have to pay for that.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

If they want to spend money on that fine, called lobbying. Other religions like global warmingism and multiculturalism do the same and aren't excused but actually funded. Church isn't free from taxing that is a myth, they mostly get by with donations that have already been taxed, and it goes into seperate whatsitcalled that have to play by the same rules as any other business. They are only excused from paying over property rights when it comes to the land the church is placed on, that is hardly fair indeed, nobody should have to pay for that.

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..... this argument doesn't really deserve a response. When global warming is applying for tax-exempt status as a religion, come back and re-offer this one.

Correction, when a company selling solar roof panels is trying to get a law passed that all houses MUST have solar roof panels, and enjoys tax-exempt status as part of the "Church of Global Warming", you will actually have an argument.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

..... this argument doesn't really deserve a response. When global warming is applying for tax-exempt status as a religion, come back and re-offer this one.

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Why would they need one tax is what grows them fat, unlike churches that get by with donations.

Actually, Koga, the Sierra club DOES lobby for changes based off of mankind-induced global climate change, and they are tax exempt. Should they either be taxed or stop lobbying? Or is it okay for them to lobby and keep their tax exempt status?

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Actually, Koga, the Sierra club DOES lobby for changes based off of mankind-induced global climate change, and they are tax exempt. Should they either be taxed or stop lobbying? Or is it okay for them to lobby and keep their tax exempt status?

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I don't think anyone should be lobby for anything as a tax-exempt organization. I think the moment you want to step into the political process you should be taxed. But I would prefer (we're talking about plan B previously) to get rid of the huge influence of lobbying firms in the first place. It benefits corporations and the super rich way before it gets down to little old quaint ideas like alternative energy. Big tobacco, big guns, big oil, big wal mart... would rather crap it all out. If businesses want to be individuals in the eyes of the law, fine. Impose a $50 political donation cap on every individual in the country, businesses included.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Taxing a church is by definition double-taxation, correct?

Churches in the U.S. are completely funded by donation. If I go to work, earn some money, get half of it taxed, then give some of the half I was allowed to keep to a church, and the church gets taxed on that, how is that NOT double taxation?

If we're going to tax churches, I say we should do away with the concept of tax-exempt organizations all-together. Why should St. Francis's pay taxes on the donations it receives but a marxist one not?

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I'm OK with that. Sierra Club, Boy Scouts, VFW, Churches, are all voluntary memberships in voluntary organizations. Tax 'em (but no more than individual taxpayers are).

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

I'm OK with that. Sierra Club, Boy Scouts, VFW, Churches, are all voluntary memberships in voluntary organizations. Tax 'em (but no more than individual taxpayers are).

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Fair.

And if anyone is wondering what I meant in the fragmented quote I gave, I meant to say St. Francis soupkitchens versus Marxist ones.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Fair.

And if anyone is wondering what I meant in the fragmented quote I gave, I meant to say St. Francis soupkitchens versus Marxist ones.

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I don't want to tax a church doing a soup kitchen. I just don't want them hiding behind "I'm a church, don't tax me" when they're paying a lobbyist $400,000 a year.

But yes, if we're talking about get rid of all tax exempt status, that's fine too. I'm not trying to selectively punish just certain groups. I'm just tired of all these loopholes in our systems and things which are, in fact, big corrupt business like mega churches, posing as something humanitarian for the tax benefit.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Taxing a church is by definition double-taxation, correct?

Churches in the U.S. are completely funded by donation. If I go to work, earn some money, get half of it taxed, then give some of the half I was allowed to keep to a church, and the church gets taxed on that, how is that NOT double taxation?

If we're going to tax churches, I say we should do away with the concept of tax-exempt organizations all-together. Why should St. Francis's pay taxes on the donations it receives but a marxist one not?

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Christian propaganda. America is a Navarosocracy. Yet its Christians squeak and whine as if they were about to be send to the lions in the Colosseum.


Gifts to charitable organisations are tax-deductible. Many charitable organisations are religious. And many religious organisations work under the cover of charity.

So churches are, in fact, doubly tax-exempt.

Whereas, If you go to work, earn some money, get half of it taxed, then use some of the half you were allowed to keep to buy food for your children - only to discover that this food is taxed as well - how is that not double taxation?

In other words, the American government subsides fat, rich churches, and pays for that by stealing the money meant to feed America's children. :drama1:

:tnt:

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

Christian propaganda. America is a Navarosocracy. Yet its Christians squeak and whine as if they were about to be send to the lions in the Colosseum.


Gifts to charitable organisations are tax-deductible. Many charitable organisations are religious. And many religious organisations work under the cover of charity.

So churches are, in fact, doubly tax-exempt.

Whereas, If you go to work, earn some money, get half of it taxed, then use some of the half you were allowed to keep to buy food for your children - only to discover that this food is taxed as well - how is that not double taxation?

In other words, the American government subsides fat, rich churches, and pays for that by stealing the money meant to feed America's children. :drama1:

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Oh yeah!?!? Well.... you're FRENCH!!!!

Seriously, you have a good point, though not as good as you think. Money you pay to a church is tax deductible (lowers your overall taxable income bracket, if there's enough of it), not tax exempt in the sense you think.

But I'm all about abolishing all forms of tax exemption. I'm a Fair Tax advocate myself.

P.S. Navaros is Candadian. You know, that big white land to our North that Europeans aren't actually intimidated by and jealous of? :tnt:

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

:tnt:
But I'm all about abolishing all forms of tax exemption. I'm a Fair Tax advocate myself.

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Basically means rich right?

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Basically means rich right?

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The rich don't deserve to pay any tax at all because they work hard to get where they are. IMO only the poor should be made to pay for public services, they are the only ones who use them anyway.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Basically means rich right?

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Do the rich get more government? No they just pay more for the same thing wether they make 60 or even 70 hours a week instead of the comfortable bliss that is a 40 hour week, nope that is not fair it's legalised theft and nothing more then that.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

Do the rich get more government? No they just pay more for the same thing wether they make 60 or even 70 hours a week instead of the comfortable bliss that is a 40 hour week, nope that is not fair it's legalised theft and nothing more then that.

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The rich benefit more from government.

You think poor people wanted the war in Iraq? You think poor people have the police respond quickest to their calls? Do poor people get the best school districts? The best libraries? The best local services? You think poor people lobbied for tax incentives for corporations to take jobs overseas? You think poor people voted to subsidize the oil industry? Do the poor get better medical care? Do they even get medical care? You think poor people serve less and get more out of what Americans in the military uniform do than the rich?

Don't give me this crap about how the rich are victims in our society. All that's been going on for the last 8 years is institutionalized corporate welfare, first with all the no-bid contracts paid for with taxpayer money off the budget, in Iraq, in Katrina, now the bailout. The rich are happy to take their tax cut, happy to outsource their business, and happy to bring those products back into the country, tarriff-free, and still charge the same price as if they'd made them here, paying higher wages, under stricter environmental and safety standards. They are also happy to sign themselves $18 million dollar CEO compensation packages for 3 weeks of work, as happened with 1 CEO for Washington Mutual, while big companies like Wal Mart pay employees minimum wage and encourage them to sign up for welfare.

The more you talk, Fragony, the more obvious it becomes you really don't know half as much about America as you think you do. We do NOT have a socialist system where everyone gets the same thing no matter if they work 40 or 60 hours... if that is your axe to grind with your country don't project it onto the U.S., it isn't accurate. We have the greatest disparity of wealth out of first world countries, our distribution of wealth compares more to third world countries and oligarchies.

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

The rich don't deserve to pay any tax at all because they work hard to get where they are. IMO only the poor should be made to pay for public services, they are the only ones who use them anyway.

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Anyone with even the most basic hard facts about how most people become wealthy in the United States would not argue this. The greatest indicator of one's future economic status is one's economic status at the time of their birth. Translation: if you are born rich, you will go forward to be rich. If you are born middle class, you will go forward to be middle class. Doing differently is a deviation, not a norm.

Does Paris Hilton work harder than your great-grandparents did when they got off whatever boat they got off? I doubt it. Yet somehow I am pretty sure your great-grandparents died without a lot of money, unless they were aristocracy or something. ;)

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Anyone with even the most basic hard facts about how most people become wealthy in the United States would not argue this. The greatest indicator of one's future economic status is one's economic status at the time of their birth. Translation: if you are born rich, you will go forward to be rich. If you are born middle class, you will go forward to be middle class. Doing differently is a deviation, not a norm.

Does Paris Hilton work harder than your great-grandparents did when they got off whatever boat they got off? I doubt it. Yet somehow I am pretty sure your great-grandparents died without a lot of money, unless they were aristocracy or something. ;)

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I was only kidding, I just feel like spamming tonight. Check my political compass, I come about mid-left. It makes me the only Backroom ambassador for the Christian-left. Except maybe SwedishFish?

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

I was only kidding, I just feel like spamming tonight. Check my political compass, I come about mid-left. It makes me the only Backroom ambassador for the Christian-left. Except maybe SwedishFish?

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Sorry, it's hard to know sometimes when people are joking through text. ;) :laugh4: Is pretty much the only one I can spot most times, you are all pretty good actors when being sarcastic. ;)

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

The rich benefit more from government.

You think poor people wanted the war in Iraq? You think poor people have the police respond quickest to their calls? Do poor people get the best school districts? The best libraries? The best local services? You think poor people lobbied for tax incentives for corporations to take jobs overseas? You think poor people voted to subsidize the oil industry? Do the poor get better medical care? Do they even get medical care? You think poor people serve less and get more out of what Americans in the military uniform do than the rich?

Don't give me this crap about how the rich are victims in our society. All that's been going on for the last 8 years is institutionalized corporate welfare, first with all the no-bid contracts paid for with taxpayer money off the budget, in Iraq, in Katrina, now the bailout. The rich are happy to take their tax cut, happy to outsource their business, and happy to bring those products back into the country, tarriff-free, and still charge the same price as if they'd made them here, paying higher wages, under stricter environmental and safety standards. They are also happy to sign themselves $18 million dollar CEO compensation packages for 3 weeks of work, as happened with 1 CEO for Washington Mutual, while big companies like Wal Mart pay employees minimum wage and encourage them to sign up for welfare.

The more you talk, Fragony, the more obvious it becomes you really don't know half as much about America as you think you do. We do NOT have a socialist system where everyone gets the same thing no matter if they work 40 or 60 hours... if that is your axe to grind with your country don't project it onto the U.S., it isn't accurate.

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What makes you think I consider myselve to be an america expert, I admire it's mindset I wish we had that optimism here in the Netherlands. You can crash just as hard here and be poor, but define poverty, poverty is not being part of these selective few to you? About these high wages, if you make a lot of money for a company didn't you earn that money, slap that equality thought on that. We just aren't equal, some rock, some don't, everything else is nothing more then a waste of time.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Basically means rich right?

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Goodness, no. I should hope to be rich one day, but that's well in the future. It's got more to do with having a tax code I can actually understand.

I really truly believe in limited government, preferably at the local town-hall level. I live in the woods in New Hampshire, don't forget. We don't get government services, and we're not rich. But we do see a lot of our money going south to Boston to pay for one crazy scheme like ACORN after another.

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Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

I was only kidding, I just feel like spamming tonight. Check my political compass, I come about mid-left. It makes me the only Backroom ambassador for the Christian-left. Except maybe SwedishFish?

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Me and you can rule together, as father and- wait, wrong time.

Anyway, I'll gladly take that position if bestowed upon my person. (It'll also have something to add to my "Who the Hell are You?" profile).

All hail my Socialistic God! :wink:

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Originally Posted by Fragony

What makes you think I consider myselve to be an america expert, I admire it's mindset I wish we had that optimism here in the Netherlands. You can crash just as hard here and be poor, but define poverty, poverty is not being part of these selective few to you? About these high wages, if you make a lot of money for a company didn't you earn that money, slap that equality thought on that. We just aren't equal, some rock, some don't, everything else is nothing more then a waste of time.

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The fact that you disagree, constantly, with Americans, about America, about things you do not experience yourself, makes me think you consider yourself an expert. It'd be one thing to live here and have a different opinion. But if I sat here and told you that you were wrong about life or problems in the Netherlands, give me a good slap. I'd deserve it.

I do not think there is any work you and only you can do, that makes you worth $18 million in 3 weeks and someone else worth $5 per hour. I honestly don't. And I think while that kind of disparity exists, and as long as some people like that it exists, and wish it to continue, and wish to take their Las Vegas chances at one day being one of those 2 million+ in assets at age 35 type people, then be willing to pay your fair share into a system where compensation and take-home income is wildly, wildy unequal. Why should taxes be "flat equal" when pay is not? No, paying everyone the same wage for 2 hours or 2 years of work is not what I am advocating. It's a false choice when people bring up "pure socialism" when I say anything about the huge ridiculous income differences in the U.S. for celebs, athletes, CEO's, execs, heirs and inherited wealth, and then all the rest of us who work to make ends meet. Our disparity is enormous-- even the CEO's of other successful first world countries like Japan SHUDDER when they hear the amounts paid out to their counterparts in American corporations. It's an individualistic mindset gone bad; it's the idea that "oh well, who cares that if 1 person makes that much, it means 20,000 other people make dirt... *I* am going to be one of the rich ones", and most of the time it's fantasy.

There's a certain level of income you can hack off everyone's paycheck because you need it to support basic living in our society. And for a large number of people (depending on where they live) who make anywhere under six figures, usually relatively little of what they spend is on sheer frivolity. Again yes you can buy a house for 70,000 in semi-rural Wisconsin or whatever, but making say 80k doesn't exactly make you part of John McCain's club in a part of the country where "cheap housing" is 470,000 even though the company you work for pays you exactly the same wage it pays someone else performing the same job out somewhere where houses cost 120,000. (This is the reason for a lot of strikes with things like grocery store chains here in the U.S., where the workers in states with higher costs of living make, relatively, much less.)

Our disparity of wealth, incidentally, is approaching the robber baron era. A time that most Americans familiar in history would not look back upon and call an economic utopia, or a desirable state to emulate.

A lot of American problems would be greatly alleviated with a more sensible distribution structure. Not strict socialism, but not 18 million vs. 5/hour. One of the crazy, wide-eyed ideas I've heard thrown around are wage caps. No one in the company can make more than I dunno, 500x what the lowest paid employee makes. Or 1,000 times. These things are not just the "natural course of things", in America, this disparity has gotten enormous in the last few decades. Why do a lot of Americans have trouble buying a house, or qualifying for a loan to buy a house? I dunno, ask the guy who had 12 houses at age 28. Or the guy married to the beer heiress. Or the lady descended from that big hotel chain guy. They all EARNED that money, right? Take your pick.

One of my big problems with the "meritocracy" argument in the U.S. is that the same people who argue those who have money worked for it, etc. etc., implying we all start out from the same place and those who work hard get rich and those who don't get poor, have at the top of their agenda things like tax cuts for the rich, overturning the estate tax, getting rid of capital gains, etc. All things which don't help people working hard everyday to make ends meet. They help primarily and dominantly the class of people already so rich they can just play around with money, investing, or passing along obscene wealth to family members when they die. I don't understand, at all, the mentality of someone chugging along working hard at 1-2 jobs making under six figures, who then goes and espouses tax cuts for people making half a mil, or estate taxes, or what have you, unless they themselves have illusions of magically being rich one day. It doesn't help them in any other way, and in fact, hurts many their state budget, hurts the Federal deficit, and helps contribute to the underfunding of all the things we like to complain about spending money on but need, like schools, police, safety regulation enforcement or prenatal care or whatever.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Goodness, no. I should hope to be rich one day, but that's well in the future. It's got more to do with having a tax code I can actually understand.

I really truly believe in limited government, preferably at the local town-hall level. I live in the woods in New Hampshire, don't forget. We don't get government services, and we're not rich. But we do see a lot of our money going south to Boston to pay for one crazy scheme like ACORN after another.

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Okay, I can grapple with that and respect it. I agree the tax code is insane. But I think the simple reality is that with such enormous pay and wealth deficits in the U.S., there needs to be a graduated system. (Reagan cutting the number of tax brackets didn't help, it kinda screwed the people at the bottom of each bracket and helped people at the top of each, but again, probably another topic.)

This is an interesting discussion.

Koga, what are your views on the taxation (and or limits) on inherited wealth? Earning disparities are something you clearly despise, but successful people - as you note - often are able to leave substantial sums to their offspring, who sometimes make good use of it and more often don't. Is there a re-distributive model you consider fair, and what is the current US policy?

From my point of view, there is of course no such thing as old money in your fair land :wink: - but over here, there are families whose wealth has been handed on for such a long time that much of their assets are in effect, stewarded for future generations, and indeed the nation they reside within. Would your view be that this is no defence, and such assets should be broken up, or that there is a time span which would release fiscal penalty in return for the benefits of such private stewardship?

As a point of reference, the inheritance tax policies of the Republic and the United Kingdom would make Lenin weep with unrestrained joy.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

The fact that you disagree, constantly, with Americans, about America, about things you do not experience yourself, makes me think you consider yourself an expert. It'd be one thing to live here and have a different opinion. But if I sat here and told you that you were wrong about life or problems in the Netherlands, give me a good slap. I'd deserve it.

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Some americans, it's not armchair cosmopolitism it is about having the right idea, I constantly disagree with some dutch members about the Netherlands, I am an expert of neither, but excuse me for having an opinion and excuse me for caring about what goes on at the other side of the big wet. Feel free to have an opinion on the Netherlands. You are taking a pretty universal problem and claim it to be an american one, that is pretty short-sighted if you ask me, inequality is the reality in every society that exists, and America is hardly a hell to live poverty is a very relative thing. Here in the Netherlands you are poor if you can't take 2 holidays a year, I'd say poverty doesn't exist here we are rich as hell, others say it does because some people have a bigger house but I file that under jealousy. It is not neo-feudalism it's the result of a free society that allows everyone to have a shot at being above others.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

Some americans, it's not armchair cosmopolitism it is about having the right idea, I constantly disagree with some dutch members about the Netherlands, I am an expert of neither, but excuse me for having an opinion and excuse me for caring about what goes on at the other side of the big wet.

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It's one thing to say "I think this is the right idea, I think that is the right idea." You're more than entitled to your opinion. But when you get into the nitty gritty of controversial issues affecting the day to day lives of Americans, and acting like you know what you're talking about in more than an armchair anthropologist sense, it's not pleasant but I think it's quite fair to ask upon what basis you are making your claims or flatly denying what others say. If it's based on what you've read or heard around the net, well, we can all read headlines and have opinions, but don't go around telling Americans they're wrong about their perceptions or views of American life and the American system.

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Feel free to have an opinion on the Netherlands. You are taking a pretty universal problem and claim it to be an american one, that is pretty short-sighted if you ask me, inequality is the reality in every society that exists, and America is hardly a hell to live poverty is a very relative thing. Here in the Netherlands you are poor if you can't take 2 holidays a year, I'd say poverty doesn't exist here we are rich as hell, others say it does because some people have a bigger house but I file that under jealousy. It is not neo-feudalism it's the result of a free society that allows everyone to have a shot at being above others.

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Poverty IS relative. Yes, Americans aren't keeling over by the tens of thousands from malaria along the riversides. But, you do have houses and schools falling apart when 10 miles away you have vastly overfunded public schools in high property tax upper income districts. You have people never seeking medical attention because they fear the price tag, and finally, when desperate enough, clogging the overcrowded emergency rooms because many have no other alternative to get treatment. (This winds up on the taxpayer's bill anyway.) Meanwhile, other people are getting plastic surgery for their pets and their fifth nose job for that fine-tuning. The leaders and speakers in our country most in favor of war over any provocation are, almost without exception (there are a couple) from the richest strata of society, have never served in the armed forces, and make sure to keep their own kids out. (Romney, for instance, all in support of the war, but his kids? They had "other priorities.") The people who serve in the armed forces fall into two groups; the truly patriotic (from many backgrounds) who probably constitute a significantly small minority, and then the poor. The kids from inner cities and urban areas who don't have the grades to get the full rides they'd need to afford college and whose job options other than the military are a) cashier at Kentucky fried chicken b) gas station attendant.

Then you have Paris Hilton, you have inherited wealth and the attempt to eliminate estate tax, you have the multimillion dollar homes in Malibu and the Canyons where, since the threat of erosion and wildfire means insurance wont' cover them or is way too expensive, the rich people get together and slip through a bill where the state covers the cost of reimbursing them when their homes get destroyed in natural disasters. Over, and over. Compare this to Katrina, where a great deal of the people who lost everything continue to be exiles with lives crowded into the poor inner cities of the rest of the U.S., trying to start over from scratch. But, those were poor lazy blacks so they deserved it. They weren't overpaid rich whites with family lawyers and ties to state government.

We spend $10 billion per month in Iraq. We're talking about a 700 billion dollar bailout for Wall Street.

But, we can't afford better public education. We can't afford healthcare. No no, that is too expensive.

So yeah, I get my back up when people say there isn't a poverty problem in the U.S., or start making excuses for how no fix is desirable and no tax expenditure for something that would help so many struggling Americans who don't worry about how to buy their next model of ipod, they worry about how they are going to take some time off for chemo without losing both their job and their house. It isn't poverty by the standards of the third world, heck, it's not even poverty by the standards of how people live on reservations within our own borders. But it's still relative poverty of such staggeringly obscene proportions compared to the tremendous wealth in our country concentrated in so few hands, that there is nothing you can call it but immoral.

Why not go to Africa and explain to a skinsack filled with bones how miserable your life is because that useless tramp Paris Hilton can drink champagne at breakfeast each and every day. You live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world with an excellent standard of living. Of course there are problems but these are luxory-problems at most.

Why so Sour-R-us

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

This is an interesting discussion.

Koga, what are your views on the taxation (and or limits) on inherited wealth? Earning disparities are something you clearly despise, but successful people - as you note - often are able to leave substantial sums to their offspring, who sometimes make good use of it and more often don't. Is there a re-distributive model you consider fair, and what is the current US policy?

From my point of view, there is of course no such thing as old money in your fair land :wink: - but over here, there are families whose wealth has been handed on for such a long time that much of their assets are in effect, stewarded for future generations, and indeed the nation they reside within. Would your view be that this is no defence, and such assets should be broken up, or that there is a time span which would release fiscal penalty in return for the benefits of such private stewardship?

As a point of reference, the inheritance tax policies of the Republic and the United Kingdom would make Lenin weep with unrestrained joy.

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If you define old money as like, going back to the Tudors, no, we don't have old money. But we have our own version of it, we have people with the last name Rockefeller who are still filthy, insane, can't get rid of it if they wanted to rich. We have people with the last name Bush with family ties going back to English royalty who remain rich, not apparently out of any particular family lineage of talent or intelligence, but just because they seem to have always had wealth and been plugged into the power system of our country.

The estate tax, in my view, is absolutely more than fair. All the ideological defenses of America's system revolve around meritocracy. The idea that, those with talent who work hard rise up, luck not required. America's promise is, work hard, and you will do better than you did before, and your children will have a better life than you did. A meritocracy assumes everyone has roughly the same tools to start with and may the best man win. Starting off with a 4 million dollar trust fund goes a long way in this world towards helping you reach for the stars over someone who starts with nothing, regardless of your talent. Inherited wealth in the region of millions of dollars to qualify you for having to pay estate tax is, even after tax, still free money flowing to you from your parents or ancestors, that you didn't lift a finger to earn. The fact that you genetically share a lineage with the people who did earn it in no way means it's somehow sacred and shouldn't be taxed. It is also a handy way to slow, though it does not stop, the creation over time of an entrenched economic aristocracy of inherited wealth, which is contrary in every sense to our democracy and the American Dream, and the values we claim to espouse of equality, meritocracy, and moving up through hard work. In my view there are way too many loopholes, ANY responsible family with millions in assets and access to a lawyer is able to set up trusts and other financial manuevers to avoid or at least vastly minimize estate tax liability. One of the ways people do it is to sign away via gifts or quickclaims, their real estate property and such before death, so that, on paper, when they die or retire, they are poor or at least well under several million. I think this is b.s. I think that if someone hands you a house worth 600,000 you should have to pay tax just as if someone just handed you 600,000 dollars. Because that is exactly what has just transpired. Why you should be taxed LESS for something handed to you for free, than someone who earned the same amount of wealth through work, is absolutely beyond me, y et that is what rich people propose should be the case.

I think the Reagan tax brackets and tax structure is b.s. It favored the rich. The caps on Social Security and other payroll taxes are b.s. Whereas average people pay payroll taxes on 100% of their income, people with higher incomes pay on only a portion of what they earn, up to set caps. This is in large part the problem with social security, financially speaking. People who earn a lot aren't putting more in than people who earn quite a lot less in many cases, because of the caps. People say well who cares, they won't benefit from SS anyway, why should they have to pay into it? I call b.s. I work in an accounting office and I don't know of a single well off older person who doesn't make darn sure they get their social security check. A lot of people (this brings us back to the healthcare problem again) who more than have the means to cover their own medical expenses in old age still set up trusts or sign away their assets to their children when they retire so that, on paper, they qualify as poverty level or near enough to get medicaid and other taxpayer-paid medical care. I'm not talking about people on the border. I'm talking about people who made 600,000 a year right up until they retired and then play the system to make sure they take everything out of it that they can. This is not the exception, this is endemic. The people with wealth or means who don't do this, people call stupid. There are always some stubborn people who refuse to sign away full control of their money, or are OCD, or whatever, and just can't let go of it, or procrastinate on setting up trusts and other tax loopholes until it's too late and they get sick or senile or up and die abruptly. But those are the exceptions among well off and rich people. McCain himself, cashes each and every single social security check. And he's a multimillionaire and has been for all of his life. Go figure.

I don't know where this idea comes from... and i dont think it's really an ideology, I think it's a justification for being selfish and shirking civic duty, that "I shouldn't have to pay a dime more into taxes than I get directly back in the form of services that benefit me, and only me." You see this attitude all over the upper middle class and rich in America. This happens with the schools where every upper income neighborhood breaks off and forms its own school district, so that the property taxes locally only go into the local public school district, and don't go into any bigger pots for larger school districts encompassing lower income areas. That's just one example. You have parents in the middle, not rich and not poor, struggling and beg borrow and stealing money to get that house which is a bit higher than what they can afford (this brings us to some of the mortgage crisis too) because they want so badly for their kids to have a decent chance in life by being able to attend a good school district, instead of a horribly underfunded, underperforming one. And the poor of course are screwed and they get to go wherever they get to go. But wars? Wall Street Bailouts? Do the poor or the working middle class get to say, "No, I don't benefit from that, so my tax dollars are not going to that, cut my taxes while the war is on and while the bailout is being paid, only tax the rich for that?" Hell no they don't get to say that. But much of our tax structure works that way in reverse for the rich.

I hear people say, rich people pay the lionshare of taxes. Hell yes they do. When 90% of America's wealth is concentrated in 10% of AMerica's population, and within that figure it gets even worse, with most of it concentrated in the hands of a couple dozen families in the top 1-2%, why the hell shouldn't they be paying most of the taxes? They virtually control the government. Their industries and corporations are all over the globe. They do their best to pay their workers as little as possible and not give benefits, pension or health insurance wherever they can get away with it. They get the best police protection and access to the very best schools and best medical facilities, and when they opt for even more exclusive private services, that is their option but hell no they shouldn't get special tax considerations for it. When they send their kid to an 80,000 dollar per year elite prep academy for the kids of celebrities, senators and Congressmen, why should they get a school voucher and not put any money into the public school district? This attitude of me first, I got mine, screw everyone else, is at the heart of pretty much everything plaguing America today IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

Why not go to Africa and explain to a skinsack filled with bones how miserable your life is because that useless tramp Paris Hilton can drink champagne at breakfeast each and every day. You live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world with an excellent standard of living. Of course there are problems but these are luxory-problems at most.

Why so Sour-R-us

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I am affiliated with a lot of social work efforts, yes Africa is a major problem but my area of expertise is Native American issues right here within our borders, where conditions are frequently very much third world. This is where you don't get it Fragony. America's not about we're corrupt and have probelms but we're good enough. America is about this can be better and progress is possible and there's always room for improvement to make a better path for the next generation. We didn't get to where we are by saying this is good enough... if we did, we'd still have black sharecroppers and segregated schools and tenement ghettoes and people losing fingers and arms in factories.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

If you define old money as like, going back to the Tudors, no, we don't have old money. But we have our own version of it, we have people with the last name Rockefeller who are still filthy, insane, can't get rid of it if they wanted to rich. We have people with the last name Bush with family ties going back to English royalty who remain rich, not apparently out of any particular family lineage of talent or intelligence, but just because they seem to have always had wealth and been plugged into the power system of our country.

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The Tudors were johnny-come-lately arriviste usurpers and very bad for business. :beam:

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

The estate tax, in my view, is absolutely more than fair. Snip lengthy explanation.

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Thank you for your well-thought out and constructive analysis. Clearly, I don't agree, but you make a solid and consistent case. :bow:

I take it however, as you have not addressed the point in your response, that the idea of private stewardship does not figure in an American sense? To be clear, I refer to the conservation of architectural, artistic and environmental assets accrued over centuries and handed down through families that discharge the duty of caring for them at personal expense.

You would prefer that the state owns and maintains these assets for the benefit of all citizens, am I right?

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I take it however, as you have not addressed the point in your response, that the idea of private stewardship does not figure in an American sense? To be clear, I refer to the conservation of architectural, artistic and environmental assets accrued over centuries and handed down through families that discharge the duty of caring for them at personal expense.

You would prefer that the state owns and maintains these assets for the benefit of all citizens, am I right?

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I think I am a bit confused, perhaps because we have so fewer really old things in America. Are you talking about things along the lines of, declaring something a historical treasure?

Regarding estate tax, you said you disagree. I'm just curious what exactly your view on it is. Any money passed along upon death of its owner should be tax free? Or something more complicated? Bear in mind that in the U.S., I believe at the moment, estate tax doesn't hit any estate passing along less than 2 million in assets. And that level might very well be raised sooner or later because depending on where you live, one house and a decent amount in retirement money might come up to near 2 mil. I wouldn't be surprised to see it raised to 3 or 4 mil sometime soon, and that would be fine with me. But the idea of passing along 10, 20, 50 million to your kids and they pay no tax on it, I don't agree with. If I go out and earn $100,000 I pay tax on every penny. It should be at LEAST the same case if someone is being handed it for free.

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Originally Posted by Don Corleone

Goodness, no. I should hope to be rich one day, but that's well in the future. It's got more to do with having a tax code I can actually understand.

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:yes:

Our current tax system is little different from any system of political patronage. Does your representative owe you favors? Get a tax credit or an earmark for your business. Do they need to pander and buy votes? Give tax credits to the poor and middle-class. The system just begs to be abused. The moment you start carving out special tax rules for interest groups, the whole system gets corrupted.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I Bear in mind that in the U.S., I believe at the moment, estate tax doesn't hit any estate passing along less than 2 million in assets. And that level might very well be raised sooner or later because depending on where you live, one house and a decent amount in retirement money might come up to near 2 mil. I wouldn't be surprised to see it raised to 3 or 4 mil sometime soon, and that would be fine with me. But the idea of passing along 10, 20, 50 million to your kids and they pay no tax on it, I don't agree with. If I go out and earn $100,000 I pay tax on every penny. It should be at LEAST the same case if someone is being handed it for free.

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Estate transfer at death is a privilege granted by the state and not a right. The state is presumed to have a "sovereign" right to all property owned by its citizens. This is the concept that underlies the legal doctrine of eminent domain as well (Source: Kaplan Financial. (2006). The Fraternal Training Program Graduate I Course: Estate Planning, 7th ed. DF Institute, Inc.: Dearborn, MI.)

Current law (EGTRRA - 2001) provides for an estate tax exemption of $2M per decedent. This will rise to $3.5M in 2009. In 2010, the exemption will be limitless and the estate tax will be effectively non-existent. This law "sunsets" on 31 December 2010, returning us to the old $1M per decedent limit.

It seems unlikely (given the overall growth in wealth) that Congress will let it lapse and return to the old limit. However, it also seems unlikely --given the usefulness of this source of revenue to the federal coffers -- that they will allow the "unlimited exemption" we'll enjoy next year to continue.


***Personally, I loath the whole idea of an estate tax. Those monies have ALREADY BEEN TAXED once (Income, Cap Gaines, etc.). Estate taxes are a second tax on the same monies.

I would much prefer a system where all income, personal property, estate and other taxes were discarded in favor of a consumption (sales) tax. The closer we are to pay as you go, the better off we will be. And, should you consider such an approach "regressive," just remind yourself how quickly the all-too-often politically ignorant would be in demanding better and more fiscally responsive government if they were actually paying for it. As it is, the goal is to transfer money from high earners to those who are low earners. It's so screwed up that its not even a proper wealth redistribution effort (which I don't believe in but that would at least be more "honest.").

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

I would much prefer a system where all income, personal property, estate and other taxes were discarded in favor of a consumption (sales) tax. The closer we are to pay as you go, the better off we will be. And, should you consider such an approach "regressive," just remind yourself how quickly the all-too-often politically ignorant would be in demanding better and more fiscally responsive government if they were actually paying for it. As it is, the goal is to transfer money from high earners to those who are low earners. It's so screwed up that its not even a proper wealth redistribution effort (which I don't believe in but that would at least be more "honest.").

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Translation, again, poor and working middle class people pay tax on almost everything they spend money on, the rich pay tax on only a small portion of what they spend money on. I'm waiting to hear a tax proposal from the rich which doesn't follow this basic formula.

When you're dead, you're dead. You're not being hurt by taxes on stuff flowing out of your estate once you're dead. The fact that the kids of rich people would "like" to get the full mil instead of "only" 750,000 is insufficient reason to cancel the estate tax in my mind, especially given that all proposed tax alternatives involve taxes which affect only those who spend money on day to day living necessities and eliminating taxes on all the ways rich people get richer and stay richer.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Translation, again, poor and working middle class people pay tax on almost everything they spend money on, the rich pay tax on only a small portion of what they spend money on. I'm waiting to hear a tax proposal from the rich which doesn't follow this basic formula.

When you're dead, you're dead. You're not being hurt by taxes on stuff flowing out of your estate once you're dead. The fact that the kids of rich people would "like" to get the full mil instead of "only" 750,000 is insufficient reason to cancel the estate tax in my mind, especially given that all proposed tax alternatives involve taxes which affect only those who spend money on day to day living necessities and eliminating taxes on all the ways rich people get richer and stay richer.

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One thing I'm not sure you are taking into account is assessed estate value. This has had a horrible effect around here, as well as on farmers throughout the country. Example: Old man with 100 acres of family farmland dies. Not rich by any means, possibly even getting by farm season to season. The assessed value of the land (due to proximity to city) exceeds the exemption by a significant amount, descendants can't pay the tax and have to sell to developers to cover the cost. So instead of farmland and trees, you get McMansions, townhomes, and traffic. The estate is not just liquid cash and assets.

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Originally Posted by drone

One thing I'm not sure you are taking into account is assessed estate value. This has had a horrible effect around here, as well as on farmers throughout the country. Example: Old man with 100 acres of family farmland dies. Not rich by any means, possibly even getting by farm season to season. The assessed value of the land (due to proximity to city) exceeds the exemption by a significant amount, descendants can't pay the tax and have to sell to developers to cover the cost. So instead of farmland and trees, you get McMansions, townhomes, and traffic. The estate is not just liquid cash and assets.

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I would agree with reforms. Already people get $500,000 exemptions for their primary residence... meaning if you're living with mom, or you don't have a house, and mom dies and gives you the house, you can move into that house (or keep living there) as your primary residence and you aren't liable to pay taxes for any of the value of receiving that house up to 500,000 dollars. I would very much be in support of moves to help farmers and family farms stay farming. Flat anything when it comes to policy and especially tax policy, tends to create a lot of problems. That's part of why even though there's a lot of appeal to the idea of a flat tax, it would screw a lot of things up in practice.

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Poverty IS relative.

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No, it isn't. Poverty is being unable to feed and clothe/shelter your family.

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The people who serve in the armed forces fall into two groups; the truly patriotic (from many backgrounds) who probably constitute a significantly small minority, and then the poor.

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Wrong again.

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Already people get $500,000 exemptions for their primary residence..

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Which means little when the farmland is worth several million.

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I think the Reagan tax brackets and tax structure is b.s. It favored the rich.

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Because the rich paid, by a great deal especially, a much higher percentage of their income in taxes.

Even now, the top one percent of people in the USA pay 40% of the taxes.

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But, we can't afford better public education. We can't afford healthcare. No no, that is too expensive.

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No, socialist healthcare is stupid.

And more money to education has no causative relationship with improved performance.

Tell me, why are democrats so dead-set against school vouchers? Would it take power from your puppets, the school unions?

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

No, it isn't. Poverty is being unable to feed and clothe/shelter your family.

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Oh, I forgot CR's subjective personal definition. The government establishes other standards which don't agree with you. I'm sorry, we can't take a poll on how everyone defines poverty before using the word in a discussion.

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Which means little when the farmland is worth several million.

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Already addressed. Though a defense of overturning the estate tax because of concern for farmers is a brand new one I've never heard before.

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Because the rich paid, by a great deal especially, a much higher percentage of their income in taxes.

Even now, the top one percent of people in the USA pay 40% of the taxes.

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The rich, a great deal of them, have a much higher percentage of their income as money not needed to support basic necessities, healthcare, or decent quality of life. I've already stated that the top 10% or so of the U.S. controls about 90% of the resources and wealth. So where do you think taxes should come from? Only the poor and working class?

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No, socialist healthcare is stupid.

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That was very informative.

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And more money to education has no causative relationship with improved performance.

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Sure it does, see the amounts spent per child in Europe and compare it to ours. Incidentally Palin disagrees with you that schools don't need more funding, if you watched the debate.

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Tell me, why are democrats so dead-set against school vouchers? Would it take power from your puppets, the school unions?
CR

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What the heck are you talking about? I'm sorry, I'm not receiving any funds from school unions to go out and stump for them. That was out of left field as far as I am concerned. No, it's because society as a whole benefits from an educated, WELL educated, population. It is an investment into our population that pays for itself over the long run. What do you keep hearing over and over again as some of the reasons jobs leave the U.S.? We're not competitive. Some of it is economics, and wages, and regulations and tax incentives, but some of it also is the fact that many more students in other countries are specializing in, and excelling in, things like software, sciences, math, etc. Math being taken as one example, there have been a lot of studies about how one of the major problems with math aptitude in the U.S. is the dearth of qualified teachers, because people with a good understanding of technical sciences can do and make so much more money outside of the teaching field, and because many of the people who wind up teaching lack the skills to actually be good teachers. Saying that everyone should be on their own, which is what a private school tax voucher would do, would mean even more overcrowded, underfunded ghetto schools where all the poor and middle class kids go, and a few elite privately funded academies for the rich. Is this a positive direction for the next generation?

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Oh, I forgot CR's subjective personal definition. The government establishes other standards which don't agree with you. I'm sorry, we can't take a poll on how everyone defines poverty before using the word in a discussion.

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Well you should try to in the future.

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Already addressed. Though a defense of overturning the estate tax because of concern for farmers is a brand new one I've never heard before.

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Glad I could inform you. But the idea that the government owns your property and only grants you access is inherently tyrannical. Some rich kid with a trust fund doesn't make me any worse off. But the dems seem to hate them.

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The rich, a great deal of them, have a much higher percentage of their income as money not needed to support basic necessities, healthcare, or decent quality of life. I've already stated that the top 10% or so of the U.S. controls about 90% of the resources and wealth. So where do you think taxes should come from? Only the poor and working class?

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Again, the idea that we should tax people because they can afford it is tyrannical; it assumes the government has more say over your property than you do.

It is hard to understand how democrats can be so very angry when others are given breaks. Bush gave everyone tax breaks, but I guess they don't want themselves to benefit so much as they want others to suffer.

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That was very informative.

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Good.

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Sure it does, see the amounts spent per child in Europe and compare it to ours.

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How about you look at studies of the US? Poring money in and assuming that will help is the stupidest solution.

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Incidentally Palin disagrees with you that schools don't need more funding, if you watched the debate.

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Yes.

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What the heck are you talking about?
...
Saying that everyone should be on their own, which is what a private school tax voucher would do, would mean even more overcrowded, underfunded ghetto schools where all the poor and middle class kids go, and a few elite privately funded academies for the rich. Is this a positive direction for the next generation?

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Vouchers give students a chance to go to better schools. But that conflicts with the democratic platform, and so must be prevented!

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

Well you should try to in the future.

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I will do.

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Glad I could inform you. But the idea that the government owns your property and only grants you access is inherently tyrannical. Some rich kid with a trust fund doesn't make me any worse off. But the dems seem to hate them.

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You are a libertarian who believes in no tax at all then? Because I don't see how this argument would apply to estate tax and not to every other kind of tax. Again, I say, why should you be taxed less on money coming to you free from someone else, than if you earned an equivalent amount of money yourself?

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Again, the idea that we should tax people because they can afford it is tyrannical; it assumes the government has more say over your property than you do.

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This is getting really dumb CR. Who do you tax, the people who can't afford it?

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It is hard to understand how democrats can be so very angry when others are given breaks. Bush gave everyone tax breaks, but I guess they don't want themselves to benefit so much as they want others to suffer.

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Wait, there are no well off Democrats? You guys spend every other Fox news cycle calling us elitists. Make up your mind, are we hordes of poor people "jealous" of breaks given to the rich, or are we the rich elitists?

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How about you look at studies of the US? Poring money in and assuming that will help is the stupidest solution.

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When was the last major funding increase for public education? No Child Left Behind cut funding and was a poorly implemented, underfunded project from the beginning. But it made everyone feel better because now schools get less funding as a punishment for "underperforming."

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Vouchers give students a chance to go to better schools. But that conflicts with the democratic platform, and so must be prevented!
CR

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You make absolutely no sense. I'd love to see how your brain works sometimes, it must look like a melted box of skittles. We just got through talking about improving schools so that people have a chance to go to better schools-- everyone, not just the rich who are ALREADY GOING TO BETTER SCHOOLS! And now you say the Democrats are dogmatically against people going to better schools. Again, make up your mind.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I think I am a bit confused, perhaps because we have so fewer really old things in America. Are you talking about things along the lines of, declaring something a historical treasure?

Regarding estate tax, you said you disagree. I'm just curious what exactly your view on it is. Any money passed along upon death of its owner should be tax free? Or something more complicated? Bear in mind that in the U.S., I believe at the moment, estate tax doesn't hit any estate passing along less than 2 million in assets. And that level might very well be raised sooner or later because depending on where you live, one house and a decent amount in retirement money might come up to near 2 mil. I wouldn't be surprised to see it raised to 3 or 4 mil sometime soon, and that would be fine with me. But the idea of passing along 10, 20, 50 million to your kids and they pay no tax on it, I don't agree with. If I go out and earn $100,000 I pay tax on every penny. It should be at LEAST the same case if someone is being handed it for free.

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I promise I will respond to this Koga, but for now I have to fly to London. I'll give your post the consideration it deserves later tonight or on the morrow.

:bow:

Poverty is just as relative as wealth.
In rich countries you are poor if you cannot buy your stuff, rich if you can afford more than the average(which is also relative).
In poor countries you are poor when you are sick, average when you can make your banana-leaf clothing so that it keeps you healthy and rich if you have a cow, so yeah, I'd say it's all relative. :dizzy2:

It is most definitely relative. That hasn't been disputed by anyone that I can see. Thing is.. I do actually get involved (not as heavily as I'd like, time and money of course are always issues, and needing to keep a dayjob) with poverty issues, mostly as stated somewhere around here with Native Americans here and in Canada (a lot of tribes straddle the border or even cross it) and also try to give to out of the country causes as well when I can. But when you have THAT discussion, you'd be surprised-- I mean, look at Oprah. Or even Angelina. Okay, controversial topics. I don't want to get into someone's personal spiel about how they hate them because of x y and z 15 years ago. But the point I am making is, they take heat, ALL THE TIME, about why are they doing all this work for "foreign countries" and not helping "Americans." That is a very common criticism of them that I hear from your typical in-line-at-the-grocery-store soccer/hockey mom type.

But then, in a discussion of social and economic inequality problems in the U.S., everyone needs to shut up because we can find someone living in a mud hut in the third world, who makes the poorest Americans look rich.

The point IS taken. But it just seems like this is a slip-and-slide, you get it no matter which side of the argument you come down on, way to basically just say "no one should have to care about poverty issues because they're relative." It sounds like a cop-out.

Koga:

While I am not the most expert person in the use of the English language, I do not believe that I required "translation." Not the friendliest way to disagree old chap....


You seem (I may be mis-interpreting you, if so, I mean no offense) to view the possession of "wealth" as some form of unfair advantage. I do not.

Somebody at some time EARNED that wealth, paying taxes on it under the system of taxation then extent. In my world view, that means the wealth thus generated is THEIRS to do with as they please. I therefore disagree with the concept of an estate tax in its entirety.

As a Catholic and a Knight, I do believe it is the PERSONAL responsibility of each individual to be charitable and to help others who are less fortunate, but I do NOT agree with utilizing government's power to enforce such wealth transfer. In this, I suspect that John Locke and I would be very much in accord.

Since government is uniquely positioned to provide certain services -- first responders, interstate transit infrastructure, national defense -- some means of funding these vital services must be provided. I would actually prefer that each person be charged, per capita, a small "maintenance" fee and that actual services needed then be charged as needed to those individuals using them. This would probably (almost certainly) prove unworkable, however.

Failing that, I believe a national sales tax coupled with a "prebate" to all citizens in a monthly amount designed to make typical expenditures for food and medicine "untaxed" (a.k.a. "The Fair Tax") is the best alternative.

I believe that a progressive income tax is actually the WORST possible choice. If your goal is to promote growth, you are punishing that segment of the economy that generates most growth. If your goal is to redistribute wealth, you are not going after "wealth" but simply making it harder for someone currently not wealthy to become so -- the "wealth" is carefully not generating "income" and the tax dodges are in full operation. If you want to tax wealth, then do so and have a cap number past which all monies etc. are taken away and given to others. At least that would accomplish the wealth redistribution objective.


As noted in my earlier post, history sides with your view of the estate tax. Historically, the state has total rights to all real and personal property unless it chooses not to exercise those rights. It is the state's choice to allow you to transfer some of your wealth at death to others, but it has the right to reclaim all of it. Essentially, you are only -- by law and custom -- guaranteed the lifetime usage thereof. Can't say I much like this, but facts are facts.

Seamus you are a knight?

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Originally Posted by Strike For The South

Seamus you are a knight?

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Knights of Columbus.

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Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

Knights of Columbus.

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that hurt

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Originally Posted by Strike For The South

that hurt

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Not much, though. Only $145 Million given to charity, and 69 million volunteer manhours in '07.

:)~ <----obligatory tongue-in-cheek

Their ranks dwindle a bit, but Standard & Poors think they're pretty solid.

Despite the KoC's stellar record, tax 'em all, sez I. The best can handle it, without complaint.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Koga:

While I am not the most expert person in the use of the English language, I do not believe that I required "translation." Not the friendliest way to disagree old chap....

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Yeah, thanks. A lot of that goes around.

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You seem (I may be mis-interpreting you, if so, I mean no offense) to view the possession of "wealth" as some form of unfair advantage. I do not.

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No. I view the possession of considerable wealth, while simultaneously crying that you deserve the largest tax breaks and should shoulder proportionately less of the tax burden than people who struggle for basic living or to buy a house, as offensive. And I view inherited wealth as even further off the deep end of the argument that people "earn their wealth." If you inherit $20 million in the United States it is not my view you should pay less tax on it than if you earned the same amount through your own work, yet that is precisely what the wealthy propose should be the case.

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Somebody at some time EARNED that wealth, paying taxes on it under the system of taxation then extent. In my world view, that means the wealth thus generated is THEIRS to do with as they please. I therefore disagree with the concept of an estate tax in its entirety.

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The problem with this argument is, it doesn't stop at estate tax. If this view were adopted by the state then there is no real right to tax anything at all. We'd be talking about a libertarian system where there is no tax and you pay on an individual basis for any service you use, or road you drive on. Because taxing the wealth people earn is wrong. Since we do not have a country that adopts this view I consider it a separate argument, I consider it unseparable from a topic of should there be ANY form of income tax at all.

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As a Catholic and a Knight, I do believe it is the PERSONAL responsibility of each individual to be charitable and to help others who are less fortunate, but I do NOT agree with utilizing government's power to enforce such wealth transfer. In this, I suspect that John Locke and I would be very much in accord.

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In the U.S. we pay less tax than Europeans do while simultaneously contributing less per capita to charitable causes than Europeans do. So while your belief about personal responsibility is admirable, it has not and would not work in the U.S.

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Since government is uniquely positioned to provide certain services -- first responders, interstate transit infrastructure, national defense -- some means of funding these vital services must be provided. I would actually prefer that each person be charged, per capita, a small "maintenance" fee and that actual services needed then be charged as needed to those individuals using them. This would probably (almost certainly) prove unworkable, however.

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I don't understand, a per capita maintenance fee sounds like a tax, but then you said charge each individual using those services? Again, we're talking about libertarianism which I consider a much bigger and separate topic from estate tax specifically.

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Failing that, I believe a national sales tax coupled with a "prebate" to all citizens in a monthly amount designed to make typical expenditures for food and medicine "untaxed" (a.k.a. "The Fair Tax") is the best alternative.

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Well I don't really know how many times I can say it. Poor and working class people spend much more of their income on things that would be hit by a sales tax- in fact nearly all middle class income would be sales taxed and only a small percentage of a rich person's income would be taxed at all. If we simply did away with income tax in the U.S. and operated only on sales tax, an awful lot of rich people would be paying an ungodly low percentage of the taxes, compared to their total worth. I do not believe that the poor and the working middle class deserve to shoulder proportionately more of the tax burden--- how is it that what they earn through their often more difficult work is somehow not protected by the sort of sacred aura of "they earned it" that rich people always want to assign to their wealth? Now, if you are talking about taxing EVERYTHING THAT PASSES HANDS, including stocks, purchase of corporations, homes, property, land, mutual funds, etc. etc., then okay. But I think that would not be the typical well off American's idea of what they mean when they talk about a fair tax system. They don't want capital gains tax, and I'm sure they'd be unhappy if we said okay we're switching to a sales tax, and everything will be sales taxed including stocks and investments. It is just replacing taxes rich people already pay in some form or another with a sales tax.

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I believe that a progressive income tax is actually the WORST possible choice. If your goal is to promote growth, you are punishing that segment of the economy that generates most growth. If your goal is to redistribute wealth, you are not going after "wealth" but simply making it harder for someone currently not wealthy to become so -- the "wealth" is carefully not generating "income" and the tax dodges are in full operation. If you want to tax wealth, then do so and have a cap number past which all monies etc. are taken away and given to others. At least that would accomplish the wealth redistribution objective.

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Yet somehow, the U.S. has a graduated income tax and is infamous for sudden fits of tremendous growth. Sometimes with bad consequences, but not because of taxes.

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As noted in my earlier post, history sides with your view of the estate tax. Historically, the state has total rights to all real and personal property unless it chooses not to exercise those rights. It is the state's choice to allow you to transfer some of your wealth at death to others, but it has the right to reclaim all of it. Essentially, you are only -- by law and custom -- guaranteed the lifetime usage thereof. Can't say I much like this, but facts are facts.

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I think money coming to someone through inheritance is free money. I think complaining and making a big fuss that you get "only" three-fourths of the multimillions coming to you is very petty, and I think pretensions that people are indignant that money from "hard work" is being taxed is pretty poor form considering that it is money they never worked for at all.

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Originally Posted by KukriKhan

Not much, though. Only $145 Million given to charity, and 69 million volunteer manhours in '07.

:)~ <----obligatory tongue-in-cheek

Their ranks dwindle a bit, but Standard & Poors think they're pretty solid.

Despite the KoC's stellar record, tax 'em all, sez I. The best can handle it, without complaint.

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http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...deoID=18963304
:smash:

Unsurprisingly, things have moved on, so please forgive the step back in time, but I did promise to respond to Koga's post.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I think I am a bit confused, perhaps because we have so fewer really old things in America. Are you talking about things along the lines of, declaring something a historical treasure?

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In a manner of speaking, yes. Many ancient houses for example, are still in private hands. These houses are part of the heritage of the country and in many cases are made available for visits by the general public. Now, the system is complex and there are many grants available to the landowner from the state for maintenance and such, but these assets are still taxed at the death of the owner and transfer to his heir. Within, there are often art treasures that would (and do) cost the state a great deal of money to acquire on the open market - again, often made available for the general public.

This is the idea of stewardship, which has infused the great families of Europe for generations - that we hold these assets in trust for one's children and the wider good. (This is not to say of course, that such stewardship is at the mercy of the tiny of brain and withered of moral, for plenty has been gambled and drunk away in its time. But the principle remains).

I suspect that you would feel that this has little place in the modern world, and that all such assets should be the property of the state. This is the unannounced view of many governments, which tax so heavily on inheritance that there is little choice left but to barter away goods to the state and go quietly to live in a semi-detached in Dorking.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Regarding estate tax, you said you disagree. I'm just curious what exactly your view on it is. Any money passed along upon death of its owner should be tax free? Or something more complicated? Bear in mind that in the U.S., I believe at the moment, estate tax doesn't hit any estate passing along less than 2 million in assets. And that level might very well be raised sooner or later because depending on where you live, one house and a decent amount in retirement money might come up to near 2 mil. I wouldn't be surprised to see it raised to 3 or 4 mil sometime soon, and that would be fine with me. But the idea of passing along 10, 20, 50 million to your kids and they pay no tax on it, I don't agree with. If I go out and earn $100,000 I pay tax on every penny. It should be at LEAST the same case if someone is being handed it for free.

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My views on estate tax (or inheritance tax) are, unsurprisingly, in line with Seamus'. Indeed, my instinctive position is entirely in line with his arguments, save that I do not have quite his faith in the charity of man. (Probably because like so much of my one time faith, my membership of the Knights of St Columbanus is a distant memory :shame:). Therefore I would be found arguing for a progressive income tax, as I feel that sales taxes are effectively flat rate taxes, and consequently penalise those on lower incomes disproportionately. I have no issue with paying a percentage of the monies I earn, no matter how great, for the benefits the state brings to enable me to earn that money. I would in fact, be quite happy to pay a higher percentage to enable my estate workers to be exempt - and in fact do, by paying them more than the market would bear (which is Seamus' advocated solution, of course).

Rather than repeat his reasoning, I will note that my forebears' assets have been taxed several times over in the earning and I rather object to the notion that they should be taxed again merely for transfer. Unlike the moneylenders of the world, I cannot move my houses and estates to the Caribbean or Liechtenstein. We are tied to the land, for land is our soul. I personally believe in contributing what I should to the greater weal of my countries, but I have little choice than to deploy those assets that are moveable to tax efficient environments, otherwise my heir will be forced to sell a great portion of their inheritance. Aside from assorted confiscations by choleric monarchs unimpressed with our political stances, the family has always managed to maintain and improve its position from generation to generation.

My father was able to utilise this wealth, not only to maintain quite a number of people in their work, but to allow investment in a company that I set up to deliver training and support to unemployed refugees in the United Kingdom. This continues in other hands - the hands of a couple of fellows with great talent but no start-up money. I have also managed to earn a reasonable living on my own through the written word and occasional service to ensure I never needed to draw money for living.

The point being, that if capital for investment and employment is to be available, it has to come from somewhere. One might argue that it should be entirely from "democratic" shareholder-run banks, but they often prove very much less philanthropic than one might hope. One might argue that it should come from the government, but they are rarely wise investors. How else then, might the entrepreneurs of this generation gain access to capital to build from scratch each and every generation? For one assumes that the end-point belief behind your advocacy of estate tax would be that no-one should be able to pass on wealth.

The enormous tax burden (planned for and covered, thanks for asking :wink:) arising from my father's passing means that I have a lot less for new investment. We'll get over it, but it's tiresome.

I'm glad SOMEBODY else recognized that a flat sales tax disproprotionately burdens the poor. I get distinctly irritated when people go on a lot about how the rich earned their money and thus shouldn't pay tax on so much of it, but that same argument somehow falls mute when it comes to the money that lower income and working middle class people earn. They would be paying tax on nearly everything if all taxes were replaced by a sales tax, and simply, that isn't fair at all when our societies support so many thousands or millions of people who have millions of times more money than they will need for decent living.

Another consideration about the "wealth = earned = tax is not fair" argument, is that massive wealth created by say, a corporation, or a series of corporations, owned by an individual, which makes him very wealthy-- that's not money he made by himself. That's money he made by amassing and organizing the work of hundreds, thousands of people. Those people took hourly wages or salaries and probably their big ambition in life was to own a house or maybe have a slightly better house than their parents did, or afford college for their children. So, when it comes to taxes to pay for things like public education, or public healthcare, or whatever the case might be based upon the country in question, I do feel that the richest people do have a special obligation to pay their fair proportionate share of their disposable income to support those systems. Were it not for the people available, literate and trained to work for them at sometimes quite low wages (I can't speak for European countries, but this is certainly true for the U.S.) a single individual making 10, 20, 50 million in a year simply isn't possible. The only tradeoff I would consider just if we did a substantial change in the tax structure which greatly relieved tax burdens off the wealthiest people and entities, would be mandatory pay structures to ensure at least a dignified living off the lowest wage. I know that some countries, such as Sweden, already have this. But no one in the United States is covering all their bills with a $5/hour job, unless they are living at home and not buying anything. They will almost certainly never own a house just off their work income. And while yes we can talk about school and education and people pulling themselves up to get better jobs, economies are always pyramid distributions. The lower the pay, the greater number of people working for that level of pay. That's how it works, so the idea that everyone could just put themselves through night school and go get a six figure job is make believe. (At the time of writing this I can't pull up your profile so I do not know which country you live in, but it might be useful to point out that in the U.S., virtually everything is pay-for-it-yourself, short of extraordinary circumstances. There are scholarships for college of course, but the dominant reality for most people is loans which have to be paid back with interest. And the #1 cause of bankruptcy in our country is medical bills.) And, an increasingly smaller number of American companies offer health insurance or retirement plans as part of job benefits. (I am certain this will get considerably worse once our financial crisis has fully kicked in, but it's been on the decline for quite awhile.)

Regarding the estate.... it sounds like you inherited a castle, or manor or something? I really couldn't quite get a fix on what exactly it was that you inherited, but it sounds like a big production if you have a work staff and such to maintain it and work on it. I honestly cannot give you an answer about estate tax in reference to those kinds of situations in Europe because there really is not anything quite like that here in the U.S., unless there are some privately owned skyscrapers or something. But chances are people wealthy enough to privately own a skyscraper have absolutely no problem passing along enough money to cover taxes upon their death--- honestly though, it' svery doubtful that there are any that are privately owned in that sense. More likely they are turned over to the ownership of a "corporation" (and a corporation can be owned by just 1 person) which of course is its own legal entity in the United States and thus will never "die" and pay estate tax on itself. My guess is that even if we had manors and castles and estates and such in private ownership, that is the way they would be passed down. There are many financial loohpoles in the American tax system, and I think that's something that perhaps got glossed over as well. People moving property and assets into trusts, corporations, or in the case of the very wealthy, "non profit foundations" and such, is a way to avoid any sort of estate tax on your property passed along in perpetuity. Those entities have to file tax returns but the individuals who "own" the property would not have to pay tax on anything except whatever profit or money was flowing to them individually from the trust or corporation on a yearly basis, as normal income.

It's a very interesting question, but I simply can't give an answer for it in reference to the American estate tax, because there isn't a true parallel here, and there are aforementioned ways of passing along property and avoiding estate tax. Basically what people do is "trick" the system so that, on paper, they are poor or under the estate tax threshold upon their death, by signing away property or putting it in trusts or LLC's or corporations. There are stubborn old people who refuse to do this and then abruptly die, but I would say out of the rich, we're talking a minority. Anyone wealthy enough to use a lawyer's services or even to have a "family lawyer" and/or financial planner is heavily advised to do this estate planning before old age and sickness or death become immediate concerns, to minimize or even nullify their estate tax liability. So, everything is not as it seems, and it's not like any bit of property passed along in the U.S. gets slapped with a vicious estate tax. This I believe is one of the things, indirectly, Obama mentioned in the debates when he talked about tax loopholes and how in America effectively some of the lowest tax rates are paid despite tax rates on paper. There are ways to bundle up your property in other legal entities and packages so that you do not have direct, personal ownership when tax time comes due.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Another consideration about the "wealth = earned = tax is not fair" argument, is that massive wealth created by say, a corporation, or a series of corporations, owned by an individual, which makes him very wealthy-- that's not money he made by himself. That's money he made by amassing and organizing the work of hundreds, thousands of people.

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That's an odd stance, if I may say so. So even the cleaning supervisor, who merely arranges the rota for the workers, does not deserve any wage - or at least, any higher wage to account for their higher responsibility? Their facilitation of a successful cleaning, ensuring that the ordinary cleaners are rewarded by another job and thus continued pay, is not worth any extra?

That rather sounds like Soviet communism. I know you have a point in there, perhaps about comparative reward, but on the face of it the argument seems one of enforced equality.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

So, when it comes to taxes to pay for things like public education, or public healthcare, or whatever the case might be based upon the country in question, I do feel that the richest people do have a special obligation to pay their fair proportionate share of their disposable income to support those systems.

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Much more reasonable, and here I would tend towards agreement. Depending on the social model (and from my reading, the United States have a problem here, being generally inclined in practice towards a social democratic model of state provision, but philosophically considering this "socialism" and railing against it politically, ensuring a bastardised system that fails to work at all) taxation for the public good - and to provide healthy, well educated people to work and grow the economy - is one of the few wise investments the state can make. Rich people, on a progressive scale, do pay more in flat terms, but not in proportional terms unless there is a banding. So in real terms, more rich people means more actual money to distribute. Equally, a fair system of taxation means that more of the rich are likely to pay the tax, rather than find ways to avoid it (avoidance costs money, so one would rather pay the fair tax than blood-sucking lawyers and accountants - no offense to present company :beam:).

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

(At the time of writing this I can't pull up your profile so I do not know which country you live in, ...

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I am a citizen of the Republic of Ireland and live between there, the United Kingdom, France and occasionally Russia.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I really couldn't quite get a fix on what exactly it was that you inherited, but it sounds like a big production if you have a work staff and such to maintain it and work on it.

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Don't worry, that's just me being obtuse to avoid too much personal information. :shame:

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I honestly cannot give you an answer about estate tax in reference to those kinds of situatiIt's a very interesting question, but I simply can't give an answer for it in reference to the American estate tax, because there isn't a true parallel here, and there are aforementioned ways of passing along property and avoiding estate tax. Basically what people do is "trick" the system so that, on paper, they are poor or under the estate tax threshold upon their death, by signing away property or putting it in trusts or LLC's or corporations. There are stubborn old people who refuse to do this and then abruptly die, but I would say out of the rich, we're talking a minority. Anyone wealthy enough to use a lawyer's services or even to have a "family lawyer" and/or financial planner is heavily advised to do this estate planning before old age and sickness or death become immediate concerns, to minimize or even nullify their estate tax liability. So, everything is not as it seems, and it's not like any bit of property passed along in the U.S. gets slapped with a vicious estate tax. This I believe is one of the things, indirectly, Obama mentioned in the debates when he talked about tax loopholes and how in America effectively some of the lowest tax rates are paid despite tax rates on paper. There are ways to bundle up your property in other legal entities and packages so that you do not have direct, personal ownership when tax time comes due.

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I was actually after your philosophy on the matter, which you have eloquently illustrated, thank you. You appear to be a thoughtful proponent of American social democracy, which is a hard beast to pin down since you all use the wrong words for political thought (ie your liberals aren't and your conservatives most certainly don't!)

I think that my rejoinders were more about the issue of tax avoidance brought on by excessive and illiberal (my version of English meaning ~;p) taxation policy. As you note above, a great deal of effort is put into avoiding tax and this is disproportionately successful for wealthy people with the means to move money. Inheritance tax is one of those that is remarkably easy to avoid for the wealthy (without fixed assets) yet is relied upon by politicians to maintain the fiction that those wealthy are in fact, being soaked.

Thank you for an intriguing discussion. :bow:

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

Aside from assorted confiscations by choleric monarchs unimpressed with our political stances

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I'm afraid I must insist you add '...and Revolutionary fervour on the continent'. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat

I'm afraid I must insist you add '...and Revolutionary fervour on the continent'. ~;)

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As redistributive policies go, that was the unkindest cut of all. :skull:

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

That's an odd stance, if I may say so. So even the cleaning supervisor, who merely arranges the rota for the workers, does not deserve any wage - or at least, any higher wage to account for their higher responsibility? Their facilitation of a successful cleaning, ensuring that the ordinary cleaners are rewarded by another job and thus continued pay, is not worth any extra?

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Oh no, I didn't say any such thing. What I'm saying is no one makes $50 million in a year all by themselves, unless they win a lottery or invent some computer program in their bedroom and sell the rights to it or something really unusual. Any corporation will have a number of employees; of those, some will be quite low paid, some will have no benefits. I'm speaking in the U.S. of course. So I think any employer is benefitting from a system of public schools, emergency rooms, take your pick of whatever social services tax revenue helps fund. I'm not saying they should be taxed till they make no profit at all, I'm just saying that the idea that the richer someone is, the more they deserve not to pay as much tax as people lower on the scale, doesn't make any sense to me. Someone with several corporations making a ton of money a year is benefitting MORE, even if indirectly, from things tax money pays for, than a single individual working for a wage is.

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That rather sounds like Soviet communism. I know you have a point in there, perhaps about comparative reward, but on the face of it the argument seems one of enforced equality.

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No, that's about as far away from what I was saying as possible, though it's a common comparison that is made when people defend taxes on the wealthy. What I'm saying is that wealthy people owe at least as much of a fair share into the tax system as poorer people, and in many cases, their wealth is possible because of some of the things taxes help to pay for. Let's take private healthcare and social security as examples in the United States. How many people would work an hourly wage job with no medical insurance and no retirement plan if we fully de-socialized healthcare and turned social security into a voluntary only private investment system? I think U.S. employers actually get away with paying a lot less than perhaps they should be in many cases precisely because they can tell employees "that's not my problem, go to the ER if you can't afford healthcare." In fact, Wal Mart got in trouble for doing exactly this, and encouraging its workers to apply for welfare to supplement their income.

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Much more reasonable, and here I would tend towards agreement. Depending on the social model (and from my reading, the United States have a problem here, being generally inclined in practice towards a social democratic model of state provision, but philosophically considering this "socialism" and railing against it politically, ensuring a bastardised system that fails to work at all) taxation for the public good - and to provide healthy, well educated people to work and grow the economy - is one of the few wise investments the state can make. Rich people, on a progressive scale, do pay more in flat terms, but not in proportional terms unless there is a banding. So in real terms, more rich people means more actual money to distribute. Equally, a fair system of taxation means that more of the rich are likely to pay the tax, rather than find ways to avoid it (avoidance costs money, so one would rather pay the fair tax than blood-sucking lawyers and accountants - no offense to present company :beam:).

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Yes. The reason I put in the little "reminder" about quite how much is NOT covered in the U.S., is because I know that in a lot of Europe people do not routinely go bankrupt over things like poor health or a bout with cancer, and lose their house over it. It's very common in the U.S. It is in fact the #1 cause of financial wipeout for an American family. So yes it is a problem as you say, and the system for as much as many wealthy Americans would like to make it out like everything is just milk and honey for the poor what with all the "entitlement programs" and "high taxes", it's hardly the case in practice with all the tax loopholes and the horrendous state of may of our social services, combined with such a low minimum wage and the decreasing availability of job benefits like health insurance. Our "entitlement programs" and "taxes" are certainly nothing like Europe.

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I was actually after your philosophy on the matter, which you have eloquently illustrated, thank you. You appear to be a thoughtful proponent of American social democracy, which is a hard beast to pin down since you all use the wrong words for political thought (ie your liberals aren't and your conservatives most certainly don't!)

I think that my rejoinders were more about the issue of tax avoidance brought on by excessive and illiberal (my version of English meaning ~;p) taxation policy. As you note above, a great deal of effort is put into avoiding tax and this is disproportionately successful for wealthy people with the means to move money. Inheritance tax is one of those that is remarkably easy to avoid for the wealthy (without fixed assets) yet is relied upon by politicians to maintain the fiction that those wealthy are in fact, being soaked.

Thank you for an intriguing discussion. :bow:

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Thank you too.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Oh no, I didn't say any such thing. What I'm saying is no one makes $50 million in a year all by themselves, unless they win a lottery or invent some computer program in their bedroom and sell the rights to it or something really unusual. Any corporation will have a number of employees; of those, some will be quite low paid, some will have no benefits. I'm speaking in the U.S. of course. So I think any employer is benefitting from a system of public schools, emergency rooms, take your pick of whatever social services tax revenue helps fund. I'm not saying they should be taxed till they make no profit at all, I'm just saying that the idea that the richer someone is, the more they deserve not to pay as much tax as people lower on the scale, doesn't make any sense to me. Someone with several corporations making a ton of money a year is benefitting MORE, even if indirectly, from things tax money pays for, than a single individual working for a wage is.

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So your arguement is that politicians have established an inheriently unfair tax structure that benefits the rich over the poor? Is this from an income tax perspective only? or are you including the other taxes that are paid not only by the poor and middleclass tax payers, but yes even those with a bit more money, be it private ownership of property or corporate ownership.

Now there is some validity to an inheriently unfair income tax structure that this country has established, being that the ability to write off certain aspects of income has always grated me because it completely complicates the tax code, that the successful middleclass ends up with paying more then they should because they do not often have the ability to tax advantage of these regulations in the tax code.

However what grates me more is the fact that property taxes - which is the primary base of income for cities and even some states is adjust to help corporations more then private property owners. All done in the name of intincing business into the area. Or the fact that sports groups get bonds and benefits out of the public coffers to keep them in the town. Last I hear the NFL is full of corporate or private owners.

So go into more detail, but then the scale of payments by the rich far exceeds the payments of others, so to claim that they should pay more seems a little weak on the surface when one only talks in generalities.

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No, that's about as far away from what I was saying as possible, though it's a common comparison that is made when people defend taxes on the wealthy. What I'm saying is that wealthy people owe at least as much of a fair share into the tax system as poorer people, and in many cases, their wealth is possible because of some of the things taxes help to pay for. Let's take private healthcare and social security as examples in the United States. How many people would work an hourly wage job with no medical insurance and no retirement plan if we fully de-socialized healthcare and turned social security into a voluntary only private investment system? I think U.S. employers actually get away with paying a lot less than perhaps they should be in many cases precisely because they can tell employees "that's not my problem, go to the ER if you can't afford healthcare." In fact, Wal Mart got in trouble for doing exactly this, and encouraging its workers to apply for welfare to supplement their income.

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Careful now - attempting to state rich get more benefit from public structures is a poor arguement. Property taxes in cities and counties is what pays for the benefits that your are primarily talking about and from looking at tax structures - property owners pay much more in taxes then none property owners, corporations with commerical property structured without political benefits often pay a greater share then many would image.

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Yes. The reason I put in the little "reminder" about quite how much is NOT covered in the U.S., is because I know that in a lot of Europe people do not routinely go bankrupt over things like poor health or a bout with cancer, and lose their house over it. It's very common in the U.S. It is in fact the #1 cause of financial wipeout for an American family. So yes it is a problem as you say, and the system for as much as many wealthy Americans would like to make it out like everything is just milk and honey for the poor what with all the "entitlement programs" and "high taxes", it's hardly the case in practice with all the tax loopholes and the horrendous state of may of our social services, combined with such a low minimum wage and the decreasing availability of job benefits like health insurance. Our "entitlement programs" and "taxes" are certainly nothing like Europe.

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Last I heard it was the loss of income associated with the loss of health. So saying its from just poor health seems a bit misleading to me.

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However what grates me more is the fact that property taxes - which is the primary base of income for cities and even some states is adjust to help corporations more then private property owners. All done in the name of intincing business into the area. Or the fact that sports groups get bonds and benefits out of the public coffers to keep them in the town. Last I hear the NFL is full of corporate or private owners.

So go into more detail, but then the scale of payments by the rich far exceeds the payments of others, so to claim that they should pay more seems a little weak on the surface when one only talks in generalities.

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Well it comes down to no matter what you do aren't you just pushing the beans around on the table? Companies ALREADY complain about business tax being too high. So, you cut property tax and replace it with business taxes, and businesses say they will take their marbles and go home, or open in other countries. You leave business taxes the same and cut property taxes, and schools close left and right. The fact is that we need taxes, no one likes to be the one paying them, and everyone thinks their end of the tax burden isn't fair. Whenever I see anything right of center talking abou tax reform, it always ultimately comes down to vastly decreasing taxes and not replacing them with anything else, or replacing them with things that will hit only lower classes and won't generate as much revenue anyway. And while the idea of "cut spending!" is very populist and appealing, there is simply no way to make any of the tax systems I've seen proposed by wealthy people and the ideological right work, without cutting things that people don't think of as wasteful spending, such as education and social security and police and fire. There are things we can cut yes but, as with McCain's tax policies, what we can cut without really sabotaging ourselves never adds up to as much as rich people want to cut in taxes.

I didn't say the rich should pay more than they do now, but I do think thare are a gazillion loopholes and ways to minimize tax liability that are not options for lower income people. I think that if we closed a lot of these loopholes we would suddenly find ourselves dealing with a surplus again. Because I do not think it is a wily minority of the very wealthy finding tax loopholes. I think it's the stubborn or unwise minority of wealthy who are not using them. And I do think that everthing from white collar crime penalties vs. blue collar crime penalties, to conviction rates, to lobbying power in government, to influence in local government (such as the Malibu homeowners getting together and shoving through a law so that the state of California has to cover their homes with taxmoney when they burn down every so often, since insurance companies aren't stupid enough to cover them affordably) to reaping the "end reward fruit" of what tax dollars pay for, all benefit the wealthy. (For example, no personal liability on the wealthy when the corporations they own default on pension plans, yet those same wealthy people still don't believe the cap on social security tax should be raised. They don't want to take any financial responsibility either way, they seem to think these sorts of problems should just fall to individuals even if they helped create said problems for people who otherwise thought they were doing the responsible thing and sought a job with a pension plan, etc.)

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Careful now - attempting to state rich get more benefit from public structures is a poor arguement. Property taxes in cities and counties is what pays for the benefits that your are primarily talking about and from looking at tax structures - property owners pay much more in taxes then none property owners, corporations with commerical property structured without political benefits often pay a greater share then many would image.

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In states where property tax is high often the tradeoff is that sales tax is lower. California is kind of an exception; both rates are somewhat high. But Oregon as an example, has very low sales tax and higher property tax. And businesses presumably benefit because they can sell things cheaper and more of the market can buy more things. Switch that around, high sales tax and low property tax, then more people can afford to buy houses, but rich people also can afford to tie up their money in property investments and such, but it costs a little more to buy things in the store. It's a tradeoff, and I fail to see where the wealthy are hurt in either scenario honestly.

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Last I heard it was the loss of income associated with the loss of health. So saying its from just poor health seems a bit misleading to me.

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Of course. But that's kind of a distinction without meaning or vice-versa, isn't it? The fact that most Americans cannot afford to take a month off work for chemo (and a lot of pepole might need more than a month depending on whatever their medical condition is) without defaulting on their mortgage is a reality. I don't see how it would be any more an individual's fault for getting sick.... I mean, I guess I am not sure what you are saying. Are you saying that if someone gets seriously sick then they deserve to lose their house even more? I don't see how that serves society.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Well it comes down to no matter what you do aren't you just pushing the beans around on the table? Companies ALREADY complain about business tax being too high. So, you cut property tax and replace it with business taxes, and businesses say they will take their marbles and go home, or open in other countries. You leave business taxes the same and cut property taxes, and schools close left and right. The fact is that we need taxes, no one likes to be the one paying them, and everyone thinks their end of the tax burden isn't fair. Whenever I see anything right of center talking abou tax reform, it always ultimately comes down to vastly decreasing taxes and not replacing them with anything else, or replacing them with things that will hit only lower classes and won't generate as much revenue anyway. And while the idea of "cut spending!" is very populist and appealing, there is simply no way to make any of the tax systems I've seen proposed by wealthy people and the ideological right work, without cutting things that people don't think of as wasteful spending, such as education and social security and police and fire. There are things we can cut yes but, as with McCain's tax policies, what we can cut without really sabotaging ourselves never adds up to as much as rich people want to cut in taxes.

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Interesting - so do you support the Farm Bill - which pays a bit of money out, I will leave out the big ticket items such as defense and social security ( a farse now that the government has been robbing the kitty). There are many governmental programs that can be reduced or better yet let the redunant state agency handle it. Take out the huge bueraracy and one might find the ability to actually balance the budget, Now will taxes have to go up across the board, yes - since we just assumed as a nation an additional 700 billion in debt we can not afford. Which makes me wonder about both parties campaign on giving tax cuts, Obama also claims to want to give a tax cut which under the current economic condition is just as foolish as McCain's.

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I didn't say the rich should pay more than they do now, but I do think thare are a gazillion loopholes and ways to minimize tax liability that are not options for lower income people. I think that if we closed a lot of these loopholes we would suddenly find ourselves dealing with a surplus again. Because I do not think it is a wily minority of the very wealthy finding tax loopholes. I think it's the stubborn or unwise minority of wealthy who are not using them. And I do think that everthing from white collar crime penalties vs. blue collar crime penalties, to conviction rates, to lobbying power in government, to influence in local government (such as the Malibu homeowners getting together and shoving through a law so that the state of California has to cover their homes with taxmoney when they burn down every so often, since insurance companies aren't stupid enough to cover them affordably) to reaping the "end reward fruit" of what tax dollars pay for, all benefit the wealthy. (For example, no personal liability on the wealthy when the corporations they own default on pension plans, yet those same wealthy people still don't believe the cap on social security tax should be raised. They don't want to take any financial responsibility either way, they seem to think these sorts of problems should just fall to individuals even if they helped create said problems for people who otherwise thought they were doing the responsible thing and sought a job with a pension plan, etc.)

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Agreed close the loopholes - but I would go farther and restructure the tax code. A lot of money is wasted within the IRS which could be saved for the people by removing parts of that beueracy. Yes it would cost government jobs, and maybe the private sector will pick them up and then again maybe it wont.

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In states where property tax is high often the tradeoff is that sales tax is lower. California is kind of an exception; both rates are somewhat high. But Oregon as an example, has very low sales tax and higher property tax. And businesses presumably benefit because they can sell things cheaper and more of the market can buy more things. Switch that around, high sales tax and low property tax, then more people can afford to buy houses, but rich people also can afford to tie up their money in property investments and such, but it costs a little more to buy things in the store. It's a tradeoff, and I fail to see where the wealthy are hurt in either scenario honestly.

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One has to look into what the tax base and what it is used for. Now for instance how many counties have free medicial clinics available for the poor that is funded by a portion of property taxes. My point was not that they are hurt - but that they alreadly pay a significant portion of the public services for which everyone has benefit for. Futher the point is that one has to look at more then just straight income tax, because taxes come from many sources.

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Of course. But that's kind of a distinction without meaning or vice-versa, isn't it? The fact that most Americans cannot afford to take a month off work for chemo (and a lot of pepole might need more than a month depending on whatever their medical condition is) hout defaulting on their mortgage is a reality. I don't see how it would be any more an individual's fault for getting sick.... I mean, I guess I am not sure what you are saying. Are you saying that if someone gets seriously sick then they deserve to lose their house even more? I don't see how that serves society.

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Not at all - one has to look at the cause in total. For instance some studies point out the raising number of bankrupticies in socialized medicine countries because of the loss of income associated with illness even though the state takes care of the medical issues.

Now what I am saying that the causes of bankruptcy can be intertwined with each other - put the overwelming cause is the loss of income regardless if its from losing your job or getting sick.

This is not placing blame on the person getting sick - only demonstrating that the cause is the loss of income.

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Originally Posted by Redleg

Interesting - so do you support the Farm Bill - which pays a bit of money out, I will leave out the big ticket items such as defense and social security ( a farse now that the government has been robbing the kitty). There are many governmental programs that can be reduced or better yet let the redunant state agency handle it. Take out the huge bueraracy and one might find the ability to actually balance the budget, Now will taxes have to go up across the board, yes - since we just assumed as a nation an additional 700 billion in debt we can not afford. Which makes me wonder about both parties campaign on giving tax cuts, Obama also claims to want to give a tax cut which under the current economic condition is just as foolish as McCain's.

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Wouldn't pushing everything onto the states just increase state deficits? CA is already in deficit, as an example. This seems like just pushing the debt around, and I'm unconvinced that huge waste happens less at the state level than Federal. A state for instance would have less mass purchasing power or contract power for things like prescriptions than a nation wide purchaser does.

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Agreed close the loopholes - but I would go farther and restructure the tax code. A lot of money is wasted within the IRS which could be saved for the people by removing parts of that beueracy. Yes it would cost government jobs, and maybe the private sector will pick them up and then again maybe it wont.

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Could you mention what specifically is waste within the IRS? If you mean things like auditing, which yes is quite costly, it really is one of the very few things that scares a few skittish people into obeying the tax laws. I'm sure there are some wasteful branches of the IRS but I was just curious which ones you meant specifically.

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One has to look into what the tax base and what it is used for. Now for instance how many counties have free medicial clinics available for the poor that is funded by a portion of property taxes. My point was not that they are hurt - but that they alreadly pay a significant portion of the public services for which everyone has benefit for. Futher the point is that one has to look at more then just straight income tax, because taxes come from many sources.

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Correct, and my point is that it should stay that way. The argument I was responding against originally was the idea that the rich deserve to pay less tax, and have their tax burdens lightened. Basically the ideologically conservative mindset. I think that with loopholes, with staff lawyers and family financial planners and estate planners and such, the rich already get out of most of their on paper tax liability. So a suggestion of remove estate tax, remove graduated income tax, that floats around a lot... I just don't see where people expect the money would be coming from otherwise. I think it fits into this whole "make government" tiny thing, but I think people don't think 2 steps ahead and picture how that would look if we didn't have enough for defense or public education. Or, these are people who already use private schools and private healthcare entirely, and really don't care what effect it would have on the people who can't afford those things. My suspicion is that the people who lobby hardest for cutting taxes especially at the top end of the spectrum do it less out of a sincere belief that we will enter utopia of free market capitalist nirvana. I think it comes down more to individual wealthy people wanting to be wealthier and not liking money going to taxes. This is, of course, just a guess. But I don't see what else could be behind it when they seem unconcerned with being in a huge deficit and wanting to cut taxes on the portion of the economy fit to pay any serious tax revenue per capita.

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Not at all - one has to look at the cause in total. For instance some studies point out the raising number of bankrupticies in socialized medicine countries because of the loss of income associated with illness even though the state takes care of the medical issues.

Now what I am saying that the causes of bankruptcy can be intertwined with each other - put the overwelming cause is the loss of income regardless if its from losing your job or getting sick.

This is not placing blame on the person getting sick - only demonstrating that the cause is the loss of income.

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I agree, though it's a double whammy in the U.S., where you probably wind up fighting with the insurance company or having to cover large portions of your care out of pocket, while simultaneously unable to work, and still having bills and your mortgage due. I'm sure it's far from perfect in socialized medicine, but it's a double whammy for us in the present system. And that's not even mentioning the people who don't have any form of private healthcare.

Koga:

It is simple mathematics to note that a person of modest income will pay a much higher proportion of that income in procuring necessities than would a person with a vast income -- I'm not attempting to deny reality. The idea behind the "Fair Tax" is to offset this by paying EVERY citizen a "prebate" in the amount determined to be needed for necessaries such as food and medicine. The person with a huge wage would receive the SAME amount (and think it a pittance) while the "average Jane" would receive the same (and find it financially useful). This sales tax would then be levied on ALL "retail" transactions at the same rate (c. 23%). This would mean that total tax burden in raw dollars would be much higher on the wealthy, and that actual federal tax paid by the underprivileged would be less in many instances. This system would punish spenders in favor of savings as well. To me, this seems fairer than what we have now, without placing an undue burden on those already facing steep economic challenge.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

Koga:

It is simple mathematics to note that a person of modest income will pay a much higher proportion of that income in procuring necessities than would a person with a vast income -- I'm not attempting to deny reality. The idea behind the "Fair Tax" is to offset this by paying EVERY citizen a "prebate" in the amount determined to be needed for necessaries such as food and medicine. The person with a huge wage would receive the SAME amount (and think it a pittance) while the "average Jane" would receive the same (and find it financially useful). This sales tax would then be levied on ALL "retail" transactions at the same rate (c. 23%). This would mean that total tax burden in raw dollars would be much higher on the wealthy, and that actual federal tax paid by the underprivileged would be less in many instances. This system would punish spenders in favor of savings as well. To me, this seems fairer than what we have now, without placing an undue burden on those already facing steep economic challenge.

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I fail to see then how this would work out to be different than a graduated income tax in actual effect, except that rich people would be paying a lot less money. It's still graduated if your'e going to reimburse most of what people living check to check spend money buying and pay sales tax on. In fact, this sounds like a recipe for almost no tax revenue. So I'm back to what I said before, I see no "fair tax" proposals that wouldn't decimate tax revenue. I'd like to get into where we are supposed to make up that in terms of cutting spending. THe argument never seems to go that far.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

Wouldn't pushing everything onto the states just increase state deficits? CA is already in deficit, as an example. This seems like just pushing the debt around, and I'm unconvinced that huge waste happens less at the state level than Federal. A state for instance would have less mass purchasing power or contract power for things like prescriptions than a nation wide purchaser does.

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Yes it very well could - which would require the state to ask for money from the Federal Government by petetioning congress. Is there some Federal government buereracies that should remain - sure for the exact reason you stated. However I would have them controlled and limited in size to prevent huge waste and fraud.

Now corruption is also in the states, and this requires the states to get a handle on the corruption within their own systems.

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Could you mention what specifically is waste within the IRS? If you mean things like auditing, which yes is quite costly, it really is one of the very few things that scares a few skittish people into obeying the tax laws. I'm sure there are some wasteful branches of the IRS but I was just curious which ones you meant specifically.

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Interesting anadote - is that I worked for the IRS 20 odd years ago while in college and so did my mother before she passed. Audits are indeed useful, but the system itself is full of double bueraracy. Pre-audit, audit, review, notication of audit and so forth. Then there is the tax code itself which creates a bloated bueraracy just to inform the unspecting of what new law has just been made. Cumbersome tax codes for the most part cause the waste within the system

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Correct, and my point is that it should stay that way. The argument I was responding against originally was the idea that the rich deserve to pay less tax, and have their tax burdens lightened. Basically the ideologically conservative mindset. I think that with loopholes, with staff lawyers and family financial planners and estate planners and such, the rich already get out of most of their on paper tax liability. So a suggestion of remove estate tax, remove graduated income tax, that floats around a lot... I just don't see where people expect the money would be coming from otherwise. I think it fits into this whole "make government" tiny thing, but I think people don't think 2 steps ahead and picture how that would look if we didn't have enough for defense or public education. Or, these are people who already use private schools and private healthcare entirely, and really don't care what effect it would have on the people who can't afford those things. My suspicion is that the people who lobby hardest for cutting taxes especially at the top end of the spectrum do it less out of a sincere belief that we will enter utopia of free market capitalist nirvana. I think it comes down more to individual wealthy people wanting to be wealthier and not liking money going to taxes. This is, of course, just a guess. But I don't see what else could be behind it when they seem unconcerned with being in a huge deficit and wanting to cut taxes on the portion of the economy fit to pay any serious tax revenue per capita.

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My arguement is that the tax code needs to be restructured to prevent just the instance that you are speaking about. The graduated system we have installed is extremely prone to abuse by all groups that pay taxes. (the problem is that the rich have lawyers and accountants to get them off, where the middleclass and the poor get to pay the fines themselves). Any system as full of loopholes that we have in our tax code has to be overhauled from the base up. I dont have a problem with graduated taxes, what I have a problem with is the loopholes that have been created and the bueraracy that is supported because of those loopholes.

Now take for instance inherientance tax - a lot of people think it only applies to a certain income bracket - and that is true for Federal, but each state also has a inherientance tax and some of them are different then the Federal. Should a family loose its family property because of inheritance taxes? some would say this would not happen but I know of several instances where this actually happened so that the inheritance tax could be paid.

And yes loopholes within the inheritance taxes also need to be removed so that its a more fair and equitable distribution of assets between the estate and the government.

Congress has made a mess of the tax code in addressing special interests, primarily corporations but some toward all groups of wealth in the United States to include the poor.

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I agree, though it's a double whammy in the U.S., where you probably wind up fighting with the insurance company or having to cover large portions of your care out of pocket, while simultaneously unable to work, and still having bills and your mortgage due. I'm sure it's far from perfect in socialized medicine, but it's a double whammy for us in the present system. And that's not even mentioning the people who don't have any form of private healthcare.

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Well here is where personal responsiblity comes abit into the picture, you have to investigate your health insurance before purchase. I do this every year during the company open enrollment phase of paying for my insurance for a year. So those with the ability to pay for insurance owe it to themselves to probably research their policies. (and with a bi-polar wife who is hospitalized at least yearly, I make sure that they cover the condition before enrolling.) If the health insurance company refuses to pay for an agreed upon condition that is stated in their policy, then there are recourses that the consumer can take.

But I agree the current system has a severe flaw because insurance companies often do attempt not to cover something that was agreed upon in the policy in the first place.

For the un-insured this personal responsiblity does not apply, they only have the personal responsibility to attempt to insure they life as healthy as they can.

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Interesting anadote - is that I worked for the IRS 20 odd years ago while in college and so did my mother before she passed. Audits are indeed useful, but the system itself is full of double bueraracy. Pre-audit, audit, review, notication of audit and so forth. Then there is the tax code itself which creates a bloated bueraracy just to inform the unspecting of what new law has just been made. Cumbersome tax codes for the most part cause the waste within the system

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I work in an accounting office so trust me I see it too. We get so many faxes from clients sending us in notices they don't understand that it's not even funny.

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My arguement is that the tax code needs to be restructured to prevent just the instance that you are speaking about. The graduated system we have installed is extremely prone to abuse by all groups that pay taxes. (the problem is that the rich have lawyers and accountants to get them off, where the middleclass and the poor get to pay the fines themselves). Any system as full of loopholes that we have in our tax code has to be overhauled from the base up. I dont have a problem with graduated taxes, what I have a problem with is the loopholes that have been created and the bueraracy that is supported because of those loopholes.

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I agree it's a mess. I don't disagree with what you seem to be saying. I just disagree when people, without worrying about the details of it, cry out for things like "cut taxes." Especially when they really just want to cut taxes on the rich. I would prefer a simple system that doesn't allow quite so many deductions and disallowments, but look at how things of that nature tend to be HIGHLY unpopular. AMT would be one example. A simpler system that closed all loopholes for the rich I would highly favor-- but I think the same crowds crying for conservative style tax cuts would suddenly not like you if you explained what you had in mind to them.

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Now take for instance inherientance tax - a lot of people think it only applies to a certain income bracket - and that is true for Federal, but each state also has a inherientance tax and some of them are different then the Federal. Should a family loose its family property because of inheritance taxes? some would say this would not happen but I know of several instances where this actually happened so that the inheritance tax could be paid.

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I know of people who inherit something like 5 properties and, if they have no money, they wind up selling one to pay the taxes and keep the other four. I would be in favor of something along the lines of, people being able to name one property as a family property that can be passed along without estate tax liability. In fact to some degree this already happens in the sense that people get a $500,000 personal deduction for their primary residence. So in other words if you inherit the house from dad when he dies and you move in, you have no tax liability up to 500,000. But, if it's just a secondary property to you, and you don't want to live there... yeah, I'd have to say I see no reason why that person shouldn't pay tax on the new property. If they don't even want to live there it's hard to make the argument that it's a priceless family property with sentimental value.

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And yes loopholes within the inheritance taxes also need to be removed so that its a more fair and equitable distribution of assets between the estate and the government.

Congress has made a mess of the tax code in addressing special interests, primarily corporations but some toward all groups of wealth in the United States to include the poor.

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Agreed.

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Well here is where personal responsiblity comes abit into the picture, you have to investigate your health insurance before purchase. I do this every year during the company open enrollment phase of paying for my insurance for a year. So those with the ability to pay for insurance owe it to themselves to probably research their policies. (and with a bi-polar wife who is hospitalized at least yearly, I make sure that they cover the condition before enrolling.) If the health insurance company refuses to pay for an agreed upon condition that is stated in their policy, then there are recourses that the consumer can take.

But I agree the current system has a severe flaw because insurance companies often do attempt not to cover something that was agreed upon in the policy in the first place.

For the un-insured this personal responsiblity does not apply, they only have the personal responsibility to attempt to insure they life as healthy as they can.

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If you work for a big employer it is not my understanding that you really have a choice. And I don't think with things like healthcare it should just be a system of "well yes, there are some snakeoil salesman insurance companies out there, so don't be an idiot, do some research." It's really not cool to pay like a good little responsible person on what you believe to be a reliable, highly rated insurance company and just have them flatly deny you an operation when you are in a critical or agonized state. And, because of the "deals" that medical providers and hospitals have to make with insurance companies for the payment they actually receive for services, they have to submit these big inflated bills like $400,000 for the two week hospitalization of an elderly person, knowing that out of that amount, the insurance company pays them something like $57,000. But then what happens is someone uninsured gets a bill and.. whoa. It triple penalizes people without insurance, who end up saying screw it and flooding the ER instead.

I would consider insurance companies one of the perfect examples of how we should not put blind faith in the idea that some sort of universal service everyone will need or use is better off in private management, actually. Giving people a profit motive for not giving you a service that could later bankrupt or kill you is not a good idea. And look at doctors getting kickbacks not to do prescreening for things that are cheap and easy if treated early, but costly and much more life threatening if caught later, such as cancer testing. Or more likely insurance companies just not covering prescreenings so doctors don't aggressively push it and patients rarely ask for it or want to pay for it. It's a mess too. But it's a little OT.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

If you work for a big employer it is not my understanding that you really have a choice. And I don't think with things like healthcare it should just be a system of "well yes, there are some snakeoil salesman insurance companies out there, so don't be an idiot, do some research." It's really not cool to pay like a good little responsible person on what you believe to be a reliable, highly rated insurance company and just have them flatly deny you an operation when you are in a critical or agonized state. And, because of the "deals" that medical providers and hospitals have to make with insurance companies for the payment they actually receive for services, they have to submit these big inflated bills like $400,000 for the two week hospitalization of an elderly person, knowing that out of that amount, the insurance company pays them something like $57,000. But then what happens is someone uninsured gets a bill and.. whoa. It triple penalizes people without insurance, who end up saying screw it and flooding the ER instead.

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After leaving the military iin 2000 I have worked for two compaines - one a mid size corporation and it had two different insurance policies with three or four options for each one, same insurance company however.

THe company I work for now is a Class 1 railroad and its insurance package consists of two insurance companies with each having at least 2 types of policies with options within that policy. Which requires me as the end user and consumer to pick the best one to suit my needs.

Now as for denying insurance that was agreed upon before payment began the legal system should hold that company liable for any resulting damage from their failure to pay.

And then as a consumer of a hospital bill that the insurance didnt want to pay, well I negoated with the hospital and the insurance company for them to pay a smaller amount with a portion at about 20% to come out of my pocket - which was my alreadly agreed upon rate.

So what am I saying - is that I agree that the insurance companies are often running a racket where the consumer gets the short end of the stick, and the system does need adjustment to be either more beneficial to the consumer or overhauled to a different system. But this goes to the arguement about taxes - nationalized health care requires that taxes be paid. Now a system that takes my insurance payments and puts it into a nationalized system is alright with me - but not if its an additional amount that I alreadly pay.

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I would consider insurance companies one of the perfect examples of how we should not put blind faith in the idea that some sort of universal service everyone will need or use is better off in private management, actually. Giving people a profit motive for not giving you a service that could later bankrupt or kill you is not a good idea. And look at doctors getting kickbacks not to do prescreening for things that are cheap and easy if treated early, but costly and much more life threatening if caught later, such as cancer testing. Or more likely insurance companies just not covering prescreenings so doctors don't aggressively push it and patients rarely ask for it or want to pay for it. It's a mess too. But it's a little OT.

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Interesting and worth discussion - having lost several family members to cancer. For instance my mother's lymp node cancer was discovered when she went in for her regular check up and had an elevated white cell count. Regular medical checkups are a personal responsiblity and often do not require insurance to have done. Well except for the blood tests when you get over 40.

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Originally Posted by Redleg

After leaving the military iin 2000 I have worked for two compaines - one a mid size corporation and it had two different insurance policies with three or four options for each one, same insurance company however.

THe company I work for now is a Class 1 railroad and its insurance package consists of two insurance companies with each having at least 2 types of policies with options within that policy. Which requires me as the end user and consumer to pick the best one to suit my needs.

Now as for denying insurance that was agreed upon before payment began the legal system should hold that company liable for any resulting damage from their failure to pay.

And then as a consumer of a hospital bill that the insurance didnt want to pay, well I negoated with the hospital and the insurance company for them to pay a smaller amount with a portion at about 20% to come out of my pocket - which was my alreadly agreed upon rate.

So what am I saying - is that I agree that the insurance companies are often running a racket where the consumer gets the short end of the stick, and the system does need adjustment to be either more beneficial to the consumer or overhauled to a different system. But this goes to the arguement about taxes - nationalized health care requires that taxes be paid. Now a system that takes my insurance payments and puts it into a nationalized system is alright with me - but not if its an additional amount that I alreadly pay.

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Well most people work for small companies/businesses, as I do. There is one plan and you either take that or you are offered a very small (we're talking works out to like 1/hour) extra increase in pay if you opt not to take the health insurance. While I know that BIG employers probably have a couple of options, I do not have the good fortune to know a lot of people who work at big places like Sony or Microsoft or places that have a lot of options. It's nice that you have options but if the small companies I have worked for are any indication then single policies or PPO's are pretty usual.

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Interesting and worth discussion - having lost several family members to cancer. For instance my mother's lymp node cancer was discovered when she went in for her regular check up and had an elevated white cell count. Regular medical checkups are a personal responsiblity and often do not require insurance to have done. Well except for the blood tests when you get over 40.

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I'm sorry to hear that. But there are always going to be instances of someone who's 30 never dreaming they need to go in and specifically ask for regular prescreenings for something like I dunno, liver cancer or lung cancer. And then get it. Part of the disgust I think people have for the private healthcare industry is the glaringly obvious point that most of the hands involved are there for profit, and profit can frequently mean not putting the patient's well being first. If insurance companies offered deductions or cheaper rates or in some way showed a proactive interest (and it would even help them!!!) for people to get prescreened for things that are easily treated if caught early, that would be something very much in their favor. But of course in general they don't, and scandals of doctors being paid not to offer proactive testing or screening are well documented. Bottom line is, unfortunately, you really have absolutely no way to know what is going to happen until you get sick. Then, when you do, you can wind up thinking your insurance company is great, or wind up in a legal battle. I think the very low confidence in the private health insurance industry is not all just.. psychological whiner-ism. :) Most people have personal accounts, or at least 2ndhand accounts, of why they think insurance companies are scum. I think we can do better.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

I fail to see then how this would work out to be different than a graduated income tax in actual effect, except that rich people would be paying a lot less money. It's still graduated if your'e going to reimburse most of what people living check to check spend money buying and pay sales tax on. In fact, this sounds like a recipe for almost no tax revenue. So I'm back to what I said before, I see no "fair tax" proposals that wouldn't decimate tax revenue. I'd like to get into where we are supposed to make up that in terms of cutting spending. THe argument never seems to go that far.

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It's designed to be revenue neutral. Though I'm all for decreasing federal spending where possible.

All "embedded" taxes would be knocked off, leaving just the sales tax a point of sale. People spending for big ticket items would be taxed the most (e.g. I buy a 20k car and shell out 24.6k; scion of wealth buys his electric roadster for 109k and pays 134+k; we both get the same 1k check each month from the government) No item/service would be exempt from taxation save for illegal items/services. Revenue would also be enhanced by tapping into the monies that currently go untaxed in the gray market or those monies used by criminals to make legitimate purchases. Moreover, it would serve as a disincentive to illegal immigration since they'd end up paying taxes without receiving services (which is the reverse of current practice in some instances).

As to cutting spending, I agree it needs to be done. Slowing growth across the board should be doable, though actual "cuts" would be far mor difficult politically. As a conservative, I can think of several programs/portions of government that could be cut away entirely -- though i suspect that some would disagree.

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

It's designed to be revenue neutral. Though I'm all for decreasing federal spending where possible.

All "embedded" taxes would be knocked off, leaving just the sales tax a point of sale. People spending for big ticket items would be taxed the most (e.g. I buy a 20k car and shell out 24.6k; scion of wealth buys his electric roadster for 109k and pays 134+k; we both get the same 1k check each month from the government) No item/service would be exempt from taxation save for illegal items/services. Revenue would also be enhanced by tapping into the monies that currently go untaxed in the gray market or those monies used by criminals to make legitimate purchases. Moreover, it would serve as a disincentive to illegal immigration since they'd end up paying taxes without receiving services (which is the reverse of current practice in some instances).

As to cutting spending, I agree it needs to be done. Slowing growth across the board should be doable, though actual "cuts" would be far mor difficult politically. As a conservative, I can think of several programs/portions of government that could be cut away entirely -- though i suspect that some would disagree.

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That's PRECISELY the problem. "Cut taxes" sounds great just as a cry in a vaccuum. So, politicians cut taxes. But cutting spending? Well, there's not nearly as much sheer waste as people tend to imagine, at least, there is very little that would be widely agreed to be nothing but waste. A few billion here or there. Nothing in the grand national budget overall. Make a few programs a little more streamlined and less wasteful, okay, that might make some services slower and less responsive but maybe you save a little money there too. But when it comes right down to it, the sort of absolute hatchet to tax revenue that rich people in the U.S. propose will not entail little cuts. It will entail cutting things like SS, education or medicare. And no matter how much cut taxes may sound good, the idea of going back to a society where old people die in rags on the street of some curable disease is not something the public truly wants to stomach. That's why I think the debate is always kept at "cut taxes" , the part that sounds good, and never gets into what programs would be cut to balance the new budget. Like McCain, who refuses to give any details on what he'd cut other than "pork", which is chumpchange next to the tax cuts he proposes.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

...But when it comes right down to it, the sort of absolute hatchet to tax revenue that rich people in the U.S. propose will not entail little cuts. It will entail cutting things like SS, education or medicare. And no matter how much cut taxes may sound good, the idea of going back to a society where old people die in rags on the street of some curable disease is not something the public truly wants to stomach. That's why I think the debate is always kept at "cut taxes" , the part that sounds good, and never gets into what programs would be cut to balance the new budget. Like McCain, who refuses to give any details on what he'd cut other than "pork", which is chumpchange next to the tax cuts he proposes.

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I think chump-change is hyphenated....:devilish:

Actually, on this last post of yours, you and I more or less agree. I want lower taxes, will settle for neutral, but ALL of it will come for nought unless spending is seriously curtailed and you and I are in agreement as to how difficult that would be politically.

I want the feds out of education entirely. I'd like to see social security and medical coverage privatized (a phase out, not a cut-and-run), while reluctantly accepting that some federal role mandating retirement savings is necessary as there are those who simply will not save unless forced to do so. I accept that some welfare/medicaid program will be necessary for the truly indigent -- but would prefer the federal government to be out of it (I'm a big proponent of government decision-making at the lowest possible level).

Such changes would be politically difficult at best.

The only way to cut spending down to a "balanced budget" without offending too many "sacred cows" that has been demonstrated recently is the approach used by the Clinton and to a lesser extent the Carter administration. Tighten up a bit on the growth rate of most programs, limit federal hiring a notch, and pull the military back to about 50% of its current expenditure. This necessitates a far more passive foreign policy, however, and the effective abandonment of lengthy (and slightly nebulous) conflicts such as the War on Terror. Since this military reduction wasn't coupled with a more strongly isolationist foppo, however, it created its own problems.

Seamus,

Well thought out post. And yes chump-change looks better hyphenated, but I wasn't even sure if it was a "real word" so I didn't bother about it. ;)

I think that the battle over taxes is a proxy battle, because the real issue is the one almost never discussed, the fact that what a lot of ideological conservatives and/or The Wealthy want to get at is huge spending cuts. They have managed to put some icing on this and make it sound great in public discourse like Governor Palin or McCain talking about pet programs to do DNA testing on polar bears, but we know that's not where the bulk of tax money goes and it's dishonest to pretend that we can just cut a bunch of things that no one will ever miss. You seem to agree with me there.

But, to get straight to the point, I think there are two Americas. There's rich America, which includes people who for various reasons defend the rich, hope to be rich one day, or simply identify themselves with the interests of the rich. And there's everyone else America. I'm everyone else America. That doesn't mean I want a free ride, but it means that I think a system that says earn everything yourself, pay for private education, private healthcare, private retirement, private this, private that, the only thing you should have from government is fighter jets over your head, is a luck system. That's the kind interpretation, it says everyone gets to take their chances at not being poor, not getting a serious illness, not being laid off at a really bad time when the mortgage is due. And in such a proposal it's hard to say that those who will wind up homeless or penniless were just personally irresponsible because it is unrealistic given the pay structure and the distribution of wealth in the United States to expect that even the most anal-retentive savers will have enough onhand at any given moment to cover a layoff, a bout with cancer, or a natural disaster.

The less kind interpretation, and probably the one I lean more towards, is that this simply sets up a scenario where those who already have wealth will maintain nearly exclusive access to all the avenues of future wealth and success, while everyone else will struggle over generations to try to move up, afford better schools than their parents had, survive a bout with cancer without going bankrupt, etc. I think given the distribution of wealth reality presently in the U.S. to say we are all even, now go make your fortunes and take care of yourselves is beyond any sort of ethical or moral comprehension. If we were talking about doubling or tripling the pay that Americans in the lower and middle classes earn, that would be one thing, but we know that wouldn't be the case, nor are taxes so insanely high on businesses that it is an amount equivalent to doubling or tripling their employees' pay. So, I think telling people save up 20-30,000 dollars per year to send your kid to school (including primary and middle and high school, not just college) and pay for all your own healthcare needs, etc., is little short of calling for a modern incarnation of feudalism.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

...but we know that's not where the bulk of tax money goes and it's dishonest to pretend that we can just cut a bunch of things that no one will ever miss. You seem to agree with me there.

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Koga No Goshi

But, to get straight to the point, I think there are two Americas. There's rich America, which includes people who for various reasons defend the rich, hope to be rich one day, or simply identify themselves with the interests of the rich. And there's everyone else America. I'm everyone else America. That doesn't mean I want a free ride, but it means that I think a system that says earn everything yourself, pay for private education, private healthcare, private retirement, private this, private that, the only thing you should have from government is fighter jets over your head, is a luck system. That's the kind interpretation, it says everyone gets to take their chances at not being poor, not getting a serious illness, not being laid off at a really bad time when the mortgage is due. And in such a proposal it's hard to say that those who will wind up homeless or penniless were just personally irresponsible because it is unrealistic given the pay structure and the distribution of wealth in the United States to expect that even the most anal-retentive savers will have enough onhand at any given moment to cover a layoff, a bout with cancer, or a natural disaster.

The less kind interpretation, and probably the one I lean more towards, is that this simply sets up a scenario where those who already have wealth will maintain nearly exclusive access to all the avenues of future wealth and success, while everyone else will struggle over generations to try to move up, afford better schools than their parents had, survive a bout with cancer without going bankrupt, etc. I think given the distribution of wealth reality presently in the U.S. to say we are all even, now go make your fortunes and take care of yourselves is beyond any sort of ethical or moral comprehension. If we were talking about doubling or tripling the pay that Americans in the lower and middle classes earn, that would be one thing, but we know that wouldn't be the case, nor are taxes so insanely high on businesses that it is an amount equivalent to doubling or tripling their employees' pay. So, I think telling people save up 20-30,000 dollars per year to send your kid to school (including primary and middle and high school, not just college) and pay for all your own healthcare needs, etc., is little short of calling for a modern incarnation of feudalism.

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Wow, for a moment I was hearing John Edwards, but then I noted that the stuff following "two Americas" was coherent.

Re: layoffs, cancer, disasters and the like. I'm a believer in insurance as a means of transferring risk. Nobody can completely predict and prepare for all things. If the government ends up serving as the insurer of final resort for the 2-3% who can't get any coverage at all under any circumstances because their risk level is so high, then that will probably need to happen. As it is, the federal government is too much involved in disasters etc. as the FIRST insurer. Trying to be supportive of everyone for everything is a chimera.

Of course we're not all "even." Never occurred to me that we would or could be. Those who have wealth will maintain that advantage until you steal their wealth from them at the point of a gun. Most of them worked hard to earn it. Those who simply inherited did get "lucky" but how does that subtract from your chance at success?

Also, I said I wanted the FEDERAL government out of education. County and City governments -- a level we're more than willing to kick out of office and who are, therefore, more responsive to the electorate -- are the appropriate venue for this. The Founders knew that taxation was part of government, but they very much tried to craft a system where that taxation was occurring on a local level whenever possible. It matters.

Seamus,

I'm at work, so I will have to respond in more length later. But in the meanwhile I just wanted to put up this link since I am sure I will lose it later.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/05/...r-family-made/

It mentions both of our "theories" about wealth, though I think the analysis left out of this article by the author is included in the reader comments below. I think the first or second comment is a reader post that, even when the rich did not directly inherit their wealth in a straight transfer or inheritance from the parents, they received it indirectly by the ability to choose any school they wanted to attend, regardless of cost, as well as other factors.

Additionally, legacy programs almost universally reward spots in prestigious schools to the children of frequently rich or well off alumni, regardless of their merit in many cases. And this has become such a huge part of incoming student bodies for some of the most prestigious universities that the level of competition for anyone else to get in on merit becomes skyhigh. One of many ways that people from middle or moderate backgrounds, regardless of talent and effort, become bottlenecked and start at a disadvantage compared to even mediocre peers from richer families.

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Wow, for a moment I was hearing John Edwards, but then I noted that the stuff following "two Americas" was coherent.

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The baby isn't mine.

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Re: layoffs, cancer, disasters and the like. I'm a believer in insurance as a means of transferring risk. Nobody can completely predict and prepare for all things. If the government ends up serving as the insurer of final resort for the 2-3% who can't get any coverage at all under any circumstances because their risk level is so high, then that will probably need to happen. As it is, the federal government is too much involved in disasters etc. as the FIRST insurer. Trying to be supportive of everyone for everything is a chimera.

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Well remember that private insurance is the reason that the Federal Government HAS to be involved as a "first insurer" for a lot of things. Even rich people don't want to pay the premiums for things like wildfire or earthquake or hurricane, let alone everyone else! As I've mentioned before, here the rich people with their lawyers and political connections all got together, all the people who had multimillion dollar homes in Malibu, and shoved through a bill where the state now has to cover reimbursing them when their houses collapse or burn down in wildfires, because they didn't want to pay the high private insurance premiums. (And of course, because they keep insisting on rebuilding luxury homes in an area which will just naturally be devastated by wildfires every so often.) The fact that private insurance companies are deregulated sufficiently to the point where, they operate on a "no loss" philosophy where they only want to cover for conditions, or cover individuals, who will never need insurance payouts in the first place, and modify premiums accordingly if the person has ANY risk of ever needing to file a claim to the point where it gets prohibitive, is a big part of the problem and why the Federal Government has to step in when a natural disaster strikes or State and/or Federal governments get stuck with the bill when there is a serious health problem in an area. (Sometimes the "serious health problem" is just the fact that no one in a considerable area can afford private insurance, so they are overburdening the emergency rooms of state-funded hospitals.) So any discussion of replacing "Big government" with "private insurance" will entail massive reform and regulation of insurance industries, and that kinda goes against the largesse and philosophy of small government pro-private business change doesn't it?

Even if we say "people should take personal repsonsibility and not build or buy homes in areas prone to disaster", and advocate for NO insurance whatsoever for said people, then you still have to deal with the fact that there are millions of people who live in areas where, once every century, there is a major earthquake, but otherwise people never even think about natural disaster. Or places where the unexpected can and will eventually happen, out of the routine. The current private insurance system would not and does not cover for such things anymore than it covers people living in disaster prone regions where it could be argued that people might be expected to "know better."

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Of course we're not all "even." Never occurred to me that we would or could be. Those who have wealth will maintain that advantage until you steal their wealth from them at the point of a gun. Most of them worked hard to earn it. Those who simply inherited did get "lucky" but how does that subtract from your chance at success?

Also, I said I wanted the FEDERAL government out of education. County and City governments -- a level we're more than willing to kick out of office and who are, therefore, more responsive to the electorate -- are the appropriate venue for this. The Founders knew that taxation was part of government, but they very much tried to craft a system where that taxation was occurring on a local level whenever possible. It matters.

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Alright first off let me dispel the idea that I'm proposing 100% pure socialism and 100% equal distribution of everything. That is a common straw man (I know you weren't making it, I'm just addressing this point generally) when people talk about the enormous disparities of wealth and access to resources in the U.S. I find these disparities largely unjustifiable in the richest nation on earth, and with how much of our wealth is concentrated in so few hands. To me "Communism" and "90% of the wealth in the top 10%, and 30% of the wealth in the top 1%" (Source: CIA World Factbook) is an ENORMOUS continuum and there is a lot more middle ground than "free market or Communism, take your choice."

I am not, nor would I, propose that someone making $110,000 should have to hand over $30,000 in taxes to cover the medical bills of someone making $50,000 and thus make them even. And I think that is so far out of what I am proposing in fact and so out of proportion with the wealth disparities we are talking about in the case of the U.S. that when people start to make that criticism I sense I must be winning. :) We're not talking about that, even with the Obama tax structure we're not talking about anything like that whatsoever, and people who posture otherwise are being dishonest. (Let me say again I know you have not suggested any such thing.) I am proposing that saying that someone with 60 million is more entitled to their tax cut than someone working and making $38,000 needs chemotherapy or help when a tornado takes their roof off is inexcusable with the wealth available in the U.S. I think that's a highly immoral proposition in fact, and I think that to say that the rich earned their money so they are entitled to keep more of their money for further wealth acquisition or luxury while saying that someone less well off who also earned their money doesn't deserve things that can keep them alive and working, and teaching, or contributing to society in some fashion, unless they can pay for it themselves, doesn't serve society. I think this is an "I got mine, it's all about me, and I'm closing the door behind me" proposition in the face of the wealth distribution in the United States.

I do think it's patriotic to pay your fair share. And I think that paying more out of loads of money you never need to ensure your wealth and that of another generation is fair, if it helps the nation overall "keep up", maintain standards of quality of life and opportunity, access to necessary healthcare, adequate education, and get out of staggering debts. The wealthiest, who benefitted most from being a member of our society, somehow bearing less responsibility when that same society digs deeply into debt or can't afford the wars it is waging, is an argument I do not understand. I do not understand a mindset of special privilege wealthy have over their money that never seems to extend to people with less, and that tax is somehow more evil when applied to a rich person than a poor person. I am by no means poverty stricken but I make considerably less than six figures and I pay my fair share of taxes, perhaps a bit more being a single male without a mortgage or other large deduction on my taxes. And I do not feel a special right to get out of my tax burden just because I work for what I earn, because there's some kid out there from Appalachia with leukemia. And there's some family out there with 8 people living in one house who are about to send the first member of their family to college. And there is a single mom out there with breast cancer. And I will not improve our society more by getting back the money I pay in taxes and spending it on a better car than what I drive, or a plasma TV and newer cellphone, than keeping that mom alive will. View it in terms of cost:effectiveness if you want to get really er, calculated about it. I can work for a few days to earn the equivalent of a nice plasma TV. I couldn't earn enough in five years to contribute into society more than what kids having their mom, or a family not being homeless, or a veteran having the care he needs instead of holding a sign on the freeway onramp, is worth. IMHO.

Given what faces the typical American family over a lifetime of work, I think the idea that what must take precedence in our policy is how to return the maximum amount possible to the rich from their tax burdens, is very uncivic.